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The electronics revolution : inventing the future
Williams J., Springer International Publishing, New York, NY, 2017. 286 pp. Type: Book (978-3-319490-87-8)
Date Reviewed: Jan 17 2018

It is likely that no technological change in the history of humanity has happened as quickly, as pervasively, and as drastically as the introduction of electronics. Only just over a hundred years ago, the electron was discovered. Since then, progress in electronics in all kinds of fields has revolutionized everything. And it’s not just in developed countries--cell phone and electronics use in developing countries is pervasive.

This book covers the time period from about 1900 to the 2010s, with 29 brief chapters (about ten pages each, usually with a half-page to a page of references) covering specific topics roughly in time order, with some topics covered in multiple chapters.

Some specific examples:

One nice chapter covers the early development of television, from early attempts in the late 1900s to about 1940; this is continued in a later chapter focusing on video recording technology. There’s a related chapter on displays that fills in some important details.

Another chapter covers “Youth Culture in the 1950s and 1960s” and shows how those decades saw a huge rise in radios (especially portable radios) and amplifiers. Oddly, the way that music was often seen on television during those years is not mentioned.

Computers, from Babbage on, are also covered in several chapters. In this context, it should be noted that the book is rather UK-centric and some of the developments in the US and elsewhere are skipped over. As an example, the rapid rise of minicomputers from Digital Equipment Corporation isn’t mentioned at all, but the PDP-11 and related machines were an essential part of the trend in which mini/microcomputers became ubiquitous. In turn, these led to the rise of Unix and its derivatives: not so important in the personal computing sphere, perhaps, but very important in many ways.

On the whole, this is an excellent book with interesting information about just how electronics has shaped the world in the last century or so. It covers an impressive range of topics from timekeeping to the Internet and does so in a nicely digestible way, sufficiently nontechnical in detail, to make things accessible to those who are not primarily interested in the science.

Technologically savvy readers, on the other hand, will likely find the coverage of favorite topics a bit thin and unsatisfying, but may learn something new from topics they’re not familiar with.

A future edition might provide updates to many of the charts, and I’d like to see a bit more US coverage as well. Sidebars on some of the odd details can make stories come to life. As a simple example, a short passage on how relativity affects GPS would be interesting and would show how something that seems abstract and far from everyday experience does indeed affect us all.

This would be an excellent text in a general studies course intended for non-STEM undergraduates with the various references providing good starting points for brief student essays.

Reviewer:  Jeffrey Putnam Review #: CR145783 (1803-0139)
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