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| - It's set during the rise of Seagate Technology, today's leading computer hard disc maker. I It’s also about Caltech when Linus Pauling and Richard Feynman were professors; about global nuclear winter risk from a forgotten missile fleet; and finding God through the scientific method. Book excerpts and ordering at Amazon.com/Hard-Drive-As-Disc-Turns/dp/1419634615 (Or search Amazon for “Hard Drive Gordon Hughes”). More information at . Craziness was commonplace in early Seagate for the company to survive, which its people called a “cowboy company.” This would be impossible to capture in a simple documentary, so this is a fictional novel of craziness, excitement, and tears as Seagate first thrived with its first invention of hard drives for PCs, nearly died, survived and finally arrived dominant in hard drives. It’s the story of the Seagate founders and it's my adventure of a lifetime in research and engineering 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. My book touches on little known Silicon Valley startup company realities: the engineering “alligators” that arise in product manufacturing; the Silicon valley business competition model of simultaneous product design, sales and revenue; U.S. patent system problems in commodity electronics; frivolous lawsuits; and U.S. tax policies that encourage employers to send their manufacturing jobs offshore, barely hinted at by leaders like Alan Greenspan. Copyright © 2007 Gordon Hughes ISBN: 1-4196-3461-5, ISBN-13: 978-1419634611 Library of Congress Control Number: 2006903148
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