Backroom boys
the secret return of the British boffin
by Francis Spufford · first published 2003
12mentions
7recommended by
8HN commenters
2010–2025first – last mentioned
88% recommend13% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Stories of behind-the-scenes British science and engineering, including the Black Knight rocket, the Beagle 2 probe and the race to sequence the human genome; suits readers of technology history and big projects.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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According to this excellent book I read: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Backroom-Boys-Secret-Return-British/... Venter also wanted to patent the whole human genome once he'd sequenced it. It was only by a huge and expensive effort by the Wellcome charity that the genome was sequenced…
on “Craig Venter: 'We Have Learned Nothing from the Genome'” ↗Good book on this (and similar) subjects: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Backroom-Boys-Secret-Return-British/...
on “The Making of Elite” ↗Seconded, and Backroom Boys [1] by the same author, is very enjoyable, too, even if Red Plenty is really in a league of its own. 1: http://www.amazon.com/The-Backroom-Boys-Secret-British/dp/05...
on “In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves You (2012)” ↗…(http://bactra.org/notebooks/scientist-fiction.html - see also - https://www.librarything.com/tag/scientist+fiction) and definitely deserves to be read if you have any interest in technology, data, economics. Spufford also wrote The Backroom Boys (https://www.amazon.com/Backroom-Boys-Secret-Return-British/d...) about British tech after WWII, definitely worth a read even if Red Plenty remains unsurpassed. I'll also add the Wayback Machine for…
on “Optimizing things in the USSR (2016)” ↗Several books could be written on the subject. My personal recommendation is Francis Spufford's "Backroom Boys" https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/aug/14/featuresreview... A lot of this needs to be seen in the context of post-imperial decline, and (in the 70s at least) serious financial difficulties. We could…
on “Codecademy vs. the BBC Micro” ↗It's not quite what you're asking (more about engineering, and only post-war British projects, from Black Knight to the Beagle probe), but Backroom Boys by Francis Spufford is very interesting. I especially liked the battle to sequence and publish the human genome before Celera could do the same and slap down a patent on it. The story of the development…
on “Ask HN: Any recommendation for a good History of Science book?” ↗You would probably enjoy the book “Backroom Boys” by Francis Spufford.
on “Panjandrum: The ‘giant firework’ built to break Hitler's Atlantic Wall” ↗This book "Backroom Boys" is thoroughly enjoyable.
on “The making of Elite” ↗I hadn't realised Colin Pillinger had died. I've found the news oddly affecting considering I never met the guy. :( (For anyone interested in the background to the Beagle2 probe, 'Backroom Boys'[1] includes a great chapter on it, and Prof Pillinger's involvement .) [1]: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Backroom-Boys-Secret-Return-British-...
on “Lost Beagle2 probe found 'intact' on Mars” ↗There's a whole chapter on the last gasps of the British Space Program in the book, Backrook Boys http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1331484.Backroom_Boys
on “An Empire of Stars: Forgotten history of the the British Space Programme” ↗He recounts to Francis Spufford here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Backroom-Boys-Secret-Return-British/... that he learned to program on an Acorn Atom. Still got mine :)
on “BBC interview with creator of Elite” ↗I assume this 3X number does not include the data collected by the US and Soviet Navies. That being said, I remember reading in Backroom Boys that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the KGB tried to moneitze spy satellite photos by selling them to Vodafone for radio planning purposes.
on “Underwater Drones Nearly Triple Data from the Ocean Floor” ↗