Backroom Boys

By: Francis Spufford

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Hardcover | 24 February 2005 | Edition Number 1

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From the author of The Child that Books Built, a rapturous history of the amazing achievements of British engineers.

Britain is the only country in the world to have cancelled its space programme just as it put its first rocket into orbit. Starting with this forgotten episode, Backroom Boys tells the bittersweet story of how one country lost its industrial tradition and got something back. Sad, inspiring, funny and ultimately triumphant, it follows the technologists whose work kept Concorde flying, created the computer game, conquered the mobile-phone business, saved the human genome for the human race - and who now are sending the Beagle 2 probe to burrow in the cinnamon sands of Mars.

Industry Reviews

Described in the blurb as 'a vivid love-letter to quiet men in pullovers', this is a fascinating account of those ingenious engineers who invented the technologies of the future, often on a shoestring budget. It opens with the arrival of the first V2 noted by the British Interplanetary Society in a London pub, and we soon read of a surreal meeting between Arthur C Clark, the famous science-fiction writer, and C S Lewis. We learn how Britain cancelled its space program and how Ernest Benn was a good friend to Concorde. The story covers other technologies such as computer games, mobile telephones and mind-boggling efforts with the human genome. It makes for compulsive reading and is the sort of book only British endeavours could produce. It deserves to sell and sell.

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Engineering & Technology Technology in General Inventions & Inventors Biographies & True Stories Biographies Science, Technology & Medicine Biographies History General & World History Science Science in General Popular Science

History of Engineering & Technology History of Science

Preface
Flying Spitfires to Other Planets	p. 1
Faster than a Speeding Bullet	p. 37
The Universe in a Bottle	p. 71
The Isle Is Full of Noises	p. 121
The Gift	p. 161
The Art of Falling	p. 207
Acknowledgements	p. 233
Sources & Further Reading	p. 235
Index	p. 241
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Backroom Boys

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