Hard Drive!

Hard Drive! is a Silicon Valley high-tech adventure novel set during the rise of Seagate Technology, today’s major computer hard disk maker, as it thrived with its first invention of hard drives for PCs, then nearly died, and finally arrived as the dominant drive maker.
 
It’s the story of the Seagate founders, Al Shugart, Finis Conner, Doug Mahon and Tom Mitchell. And it’s Gordon Hughes story as a magnetics researcher turned design engineer, participating in the half-century of disk drive progress led by colorful and intriguing pioneers that took drives from a dream of Ada, Countess of Lovelace in Victorian England, to today’s drives that hold the world’s information and empower the Internet.
 
The book covers little known Silicon Valley start-up company realities: the engineering ‘alligators’ that arise in manufacturing products, U.S. patent system problems in commodity electronics, frivolous lawsuits, and U.S. tax policies that encourage manufacturing offshore, barely hinted at by leaders like Alan Greenspan.
 
Book sales are handled by Amazon.com
Price: $18.99