I'm slowly working through "Jacquard's Web" (a book on the history of computing, drawing links between the Jacquard loom - a loom that used punched cards to weave figured silk - and more modern machines, up to and including the computer).

I have to admit I like the sciency stuff and the "how these things work" part better than the gossip about the inventor's lives.

(Did you know Ada Lovelace - Lord Byron's daughter and a fairly bright woman [though, according to this book's author, not the super-genius she is made out to be by the Steampunkers] was fond of sex? Trufax: "And there was the physical side of marriage. Ada took to it with relish. Several letters she wrote to [her husband]...make clear how much she enjoyed love-making." Um, yeah. I think I could do without knowing THAT.)

Right now I'm about 2/3 of the way through, reading about the early days of IBM (and its precursor. I would LOVE to be able to see a Hollerith Tabulator - used to compile information in the 1890 census - yes, there was a mechanical computer of sorts used that early - in action, because it sounds both beautiful and fascinating.

And then there's Thomas John Watson, one of the early leaders of IBM. I knew nothing about the man. He is presented as a master salesman, and comes across at first as perhaps the original Pointy-Haired Boss:

"Hollerith [the originator of the tabulating machine] regarded engineers as backroom boys who worked best when they were left alone. Watson, on the other hand, was quick to take engineers out of the laboratory and into customers' offices to find out precisely what functions and features customers needed...Watson chased his engineers back into customers' premises again to deal with any problems the customer might be having..."

I dunno, but based on the (small number of) engineers I have known, many of them went into that field precisely to reduce interactions-with-customers.

Watson also ran C-T-R (a precursor to IBM) in a way that is eerily reminiscent of some of the "modern" corporate stuff that I am so eager to avoid by being in academe:

"There were company flags, endless group photographs of everybody being cheerful together, a daily company newspaper, banquets at horseshoe tables, and even company songs" (emphasis mine)

AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHH! Jean-Paul Sartre, I may have just found an alternate version of Hell for you to write about.

(Watson also required all employees to have the word "THINK" posted on placards in their offices. The Think System?)

But, just as I'm hating him for being pointy-haired, he redeems himself: In the Great Depression, rather than releasing all his engineers and salesmen and others to the bread lines as many other corporations did, he chose to keep them working and on the payroll. They kept building machines because of Watson's belief that things would turn around. (And when they did, he was one of the few equipped to provide customers - including the US government - with tabulating machines). Perhaps this is in part the origin of the much-lauded and now-long-gone "loyalty" of companies to their workers. (It wasn't so much an altruistic decision - at least not how the book's author presents it - as a canny gamble that paid off very well. But still).

But my favorite parts of the book remain the descriptions of the machines and how they worked. There were electromechanical calculators and computers before there were electronic ones! There were things like adding machines where you set cogs to the values you were inputting and then turned a crank to make it work the arithmetic! There was a thing called an arithmometer, and another called a comptometer! It's such a vanished time - one you never hear about in a "typical" history class, and yet it was not so long ago. And what if electronics had not been discovered? Would we be accessing the internet on room-sized machines that we had to (maybe) power with foot-treadles like old-time sewing machines? It boggles the mind.

There's a book out there called something like "The Victorian Internet" (I think it's about the telegraph). I want to read that some time. I find the history of modern technology pretty fascinating.