"Scientists and engineers, it seems, were the first to express a desire for a relatively inexpensive computer than they could operate themselves. The result was a machine called a minicomputer. In time, the demand for such a machine turned out to be enormous. Probably IBM could not have controlled this new market, the way it did the one for large computers. As it happened, IBM ignored it, and so the field was left open for aspiring entrepreneurs - often, in this case, young computer engineers who left corporate armies with dreams of building corporate armies of their own." (Chapter 1, pg. 12)

"But around the time when Data General established itself in the beauty parlor, other entrepreneurs were starting up minicomputer companies at the rate of about one every three days. Only a few of those other new outfits survived the decade, whereas Data General, before it had exhausted its...