backroom boys

great and unfortunately very short book about british geeks.

it consists of couple of short chapters covering specific areas - from satellites (Ariel program), Blue Streak missiles, through Concorde (and all history of trying to keep it in service), to geeky pieces like legendary David Brabens Elite game.

you won’t find too much about Elite game itself, as author is focusing more on the business side of things. however, there are couple of interesting pieces - like David relentless work on optimizing game code for BBC Micro (20kB of RAM!). game went on sale in september 1984 - i was six years old at the time, and in two years my father will buy ZX Spectrum 81. with shocking… 1kB of RAM! :) i only got to know Elite much later - in late 90’s in PC era.

it’s hard to be more verbose without copying whole chapters, so - i’d highly recommend you get a copy ASAP and spend one evening with her.