Rescuing Prometheus: The Story of the Mammoth Projects--Sage, Icbm, ARPAnet/Internet, and Boston's Ce Ntral Artery/Tunnel--That Created New

by Thomas P. Hughes

Book Overview

"A rare insight into industrial planning on a huge scale...Excellent." -- The Economist Rescuing Prometheus is an eye-opening and marvelously informative look at some of the technological projects... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679411518
• ISBN13: 9780679411512
• Release Date: July 1998
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 372 Pages
• Weight: 1.59 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.6" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

Precursor to software programming

Rescuing Prometheus provides eyewitness detail into the people, thought processes, decision highlights of 4 large, monumental projects in system engineering. Along the way, as a side-effect, these events created the world of software programming. When reading this book in combination with other books such as "Digital Apollo" and the "History of the MIT Flight Computer", one gains a deep understanding of what is and why it is. If you need this grounding, this is an excellent book. I think it's rating depends on what you want from the book. For example, I have read hundreds of books on the begining of the Arpanet. This book goes 10 years earlier and tells the story that is never told. Is that helpful? Of course it is.