I was thinking about the early electrical engineers and programmers from the 70’s and early 80’s that used to spend hours upon hours trying to accomplish something with a circuit and computer memory that is ‘laughable’ by modern standards.

But certainly a number of these accomplishments were ground breaking at the time and led the way for modern day technology while most of the other accomplishments served to keep alive the passion for computer programming as well as computer using.

Does anyone know of any books/webpages/etc. that convey how absolutely astonishing an early application was at the time of its creation as well as indicating if it was a predecessor to a modern use or whether it simply served to inspire other programmers and then died out.

I understand that during that time period, software was more integrated with hardware and that most things were do it yourself, so people were more so making their own applications (or rebuilding someone else’s) rather than modifying a commercial software application like nowadays.

However, I am especially searching for the types of inventions involving things that people did have in common: hardware components, machine languages, etc. which someone then used to originated something that all his/her contemporaries thought was remarkable at the time.

Anyone know where I can look? Thanks.

If you check on Wikipedia, and look up "transistor", which is one of the most influential and important inventions of the 20th century, I think they have links to other sites and pages that link with those.