The Innovators (book)

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Author	Walter Isaacson
Language	English
Genre	Biography
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Publication date	October 7, 2014
Publication place	United States
Media type	E-book, print (hardback and paperback), audiobook
Pages	488
ISBN	1-4767-0869-X
OCLC	876012030
Preceded by	Steve Jobs
Followed by	Leonardo Da Vinci

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution is an overview of the history of computer science and the Digital Revolution. It was written by Walter Isaacson, and published in 2014 by Simon & Schuster.

The book summarizes the contributions of several innovators who have made pivotal breakthroughs in computer technology and its applications—from the world's first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace, and Alan Turing's work in artificial intelligence, through the Information Age of the present.^[1][2]

Corrections

In December 2015, Simon & Schuster published a revised electronic edition of The Innovators, which corrected significant errors and omissions in the original edition's Chapter 9, which covers software. Isaacson – who in researching the book interviewed Bill Gates but not Paul Allen – had assigned virtually all credit for the company's early innovations and success to Gates, when in fact they were the product of highly collaborative efforts by several people, including Allen. In the revised edition, among other edits, Isaacson includes archival material from 1981 which Gates credits Allen for being the "idea man" in charge of R&D at Microsoft, while he, Gates, was "the frontman running the business".^[3]

In the 2019 three-part Netflix docuseries Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates, this conflict is briefly mentioned by who appears to be Gates's secretary as she goes over the books that Gates was reading at the time of recording.

Isaacson explains in his book that, as he was writing about Wikipedia and how it worked, he decided that his book should be collectively examined in a Wikipedia manner. Hence he uploaded a draft on Medium, allowing readers to make dozens of comments to correct and improve the book.

Innovators by chapter

Innovators discussed in the book by chapter:

• Chapter 1 – Ada, Countess of Lovelace:
  • Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace
• Chapter 2 – The Computer:
  • Herman Hollerith, Vannevar Bush, Konrad Zuse, Alan Turing, George Stibitz, Claude Shannon, Howard Aiken, John Atanasoff, John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert
• Chapter 3 – Programming:
  • Grace Hopper, Richard Bloch, Jean Jennings, John von Neumann
• Chapter 4 – The Transistor:
  • John Bardeen, William Shockley, Walter Brattain, Patrick Haggerty, Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore
• Chapter 5 – The Microchip:
  • Jack Kilby, Arthur Rock, Andy Grove, Ted Hoff, Jean Hoerni
• Chapter 6 – Video Games:
  • Steve Russell, Nolan Bushnell
• Chapter 7 – The Internet:
  • J. C. R. Licklider, Robert Taylor, Larry Roberts, Paul Baran, Donald Davies, Leonard Kleinrock, Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn
• Chapter 8 – The Personal Computer:
  • Ken Kesey, Stewart Brand, Doug Engelbart, Alan Kay, Lee Felsenstien, Ed Roberts
• Chapter 9 – Software:
  • Paul Allen, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Dan Bricklin
• Chapter 10 – Online
  • William von Meister, Steve Case, Al Gore
• Chapter 11 – The Web
  • Tim Berners-Lee, Marc Andreessen, Justin Hall, Ev Williams, Ward Cunningham, Jimmy Wales, Larry Page, Sergey Brin
• Chapter 12 – Ada Forever

See also

• 2014 in literature

References

1. "Interview with Walter Isaacson (with transcript)". Charlie Rose. PBS. October 13, 2014. Retrieved October 5, 2018.
2. The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. 7 October 2014. ISBN 9781442376229. Retrieved 2014-10-24.
3. Isaacson, Walter (December 2015). The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1471138799.

External links

• Simon & Schuster Publisher's article on The Innovators
• Discussion with Isaacson on The Innovators at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, October 14, 2014
• Discussion with Isaacson The Innovators at the Miami Book Fair International, November 22, 2014
• You can look it up: The Wikipedia story – excerpt from The Innovators