Tracy Kidder (born November 12, 1945 in New York City) is an American author of multiple books. Kidder may be best known, especially within the computing community, for his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Soul of a New Machine, an account of the development of Data General's Eclipse/MV minicomputers. November 12 is the 316th day of the year (317th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 49 days remaining. ... 1945 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the United States, the most densely populated major city in North America, and is at the center of international finance, politics, entertainment, and culture. ... Originally, the word computing was synonymous with counting and calculating, and a science that deals with the original sense of computing mathematical calculations. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-04-13, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... The Soul of a New Machine is a non-fiction book, authored by Tracy Kidder. ... Data General was a pioneering firm in the minicomputer world, known primarily for their Nova 16-bit minicomputer which gained a wide following and was used in many forms for over a decade. ...

One side effect of that book was to popularize throughout the computer world the term canard, which had been in-house slang at Data General, with the meaning "mistaken and confused belief". In aeronautics, canard (French for duck) is a type of fixed-wing aircraft in which the tailplane is ahead of the main lifting surfaces, rather than behind them as in conventional aircraft. ... Slang is the non-standard use of words in a language of a particular social group, and sometimes the creation of new words or importation of words from another language. ... Data General was a pioneering firm in the minicomputer world, known primarily for their Nova 16-bit minicomputer which gained a wide following and was used in many forms for over a decade. ...

Bibliography

• Tracy Kidder, Among Schoolchildren, Avon Books, 1990, ISBN 0380710897
• Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine, Back Bay Books, 2000, ISBN 0316491977
• Tracy Kidder, House, Hougton Mifflin Co., 1999, ISBN 0618001913
• Tracy Kidder, Home Town, Random House, 1999, ISBN 0671785214
• Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: Healing the World: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, Random House, 2003, ISBN 0375506160

The Soul of a New Machine is a non-fiction book, authored by Tracy Kidder. ... Dr. Paul Farmeris the Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard and an attending physician at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston. ...

External Links

• 1985 audio interview of Tracy Kidder by Don Swaim of CBS Radio, RealAudio