No industries had greater impact on everyday life and work in the second half of the twentieth century than consumer electronics and computers. Yet the epic story of the founding of the Information Age remains almost completely unknown. Now Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alfred D. Chandler Jr. systematically records for the first time from a global perspective the origins and evolution of these transforming industries. In this marvelous chronicle of the trailblazing high-technology companies and products that laid the foundation for the Electronic Century, Chandler shows with unerring command of fact and data precisely where, when, how, and by whom technical knowledge was initially commercialized. In richly textured magisterial prose, Chandler describes how Radio Corporation of America shaped the consumer electronics industry from its beginnings in the 1920s to the 1960s. He explains how catastrophic management decisions that brought about the collapse of RCA opened the door to Sony and Matsushita and ultimately to Japan's worldwide conquest of consumer electronics markets. At the same time, Chandler shows that the computer industry has been a strikingly American triumph. Readers will discover a wealth of penetrating insights in Chandler's riveting account of the rise of the mainframe, the minicomputer, and the microprocessor. What is more, Chandler documents the surprising and little-known fact that first mover IBM dominated the computer industry from the 1950s to the 1990s and that the Japanese, first by making IBM plug-compatibles and later with their large systems and servers, became its major competitors.Only by following the history of firms that commercialized thesenew technologies and knowing the details of competitive success and failure can managers truly understand their industries. "Inventing the Electronic Century" is timely and essential reading for every manager and student of high technology.
- ISBN10 0743215672
- ISBN13 9780743215671
- Publish Date 30 October 2001
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 25 March 2015
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Simon & Schuster
- Imprint The Free Press
- Pages 336
- Language English