A Briefer History of Time (inscribed to Intel founder Gordon Moore)
NY: Bantam, 2005. First edition. Hardcover. A spectacular association copy, inscribed in the year of publication by way of a thumbprint to Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who was a friend and crucial supporter of Hawking. Hawking's second wife provides a written inscription alongside the thumbprint, as of course Hawking was unable to write by hand due to his advanced ALS: "Gordon, with very many thanks for your continued interest and support, with warmest wishes, Stephen. Thumbprint certified by Elaine Hawking, Elaine Hawking [her signature], 16 November 2005, San Francisco." Uncommon or scarce signed. A powerful association because Hawking's computer and voice-synthesizing technology were substantially provided by Intel at Moore's directive.
Gordon Moore holds an early and storied place in the history of computing and Silicon Valley. Aside from co-founding Intel along with two others, he is best known for "Moore's Law," his prediction that the number of transistors that could fit on a silicon chip would double every two years--a prediction that would hold up for decades. He also argued correctly that computers would become more and more expensive to create and yet cheaper on the market because so many would be sold. By 1980, Intel was the most successful semiconductor maker in the world and its microprocessors were found in 80 percent of computers. Moore was the chief executive from 1975-1987. He later became an important philanthropist, donating more than $5 billion via his foundation since 2000. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002.
The story of Moore's support of Hawking is a great one, as detailed at length by this 2015 WIRED article, "How Intel Gave Stephen Hawking a Voice." Intel began providing computers designed specifically for Hawking starting in 1997, but by 2011 Hawking's condition had changed to the point where he was able to write only a couple words per minute. He wrote to Moore: "My speech input is very, very slow these days. Is there any way Intel could help?" Moore tasked his Chief Technical Officer with coming to Hawking's aid, and Intel devoted an enormous amount of resources to troubleshooting Hawking's setup, initially sending a team of five to England to meet with Hawking and begin this work. One of them, Pete Denman, an interaction designer who was paralyzed and in a wheel chair himself, reflected: "After I broke my neck and became paralyzed, my mother gave me a copy of A Brief History of Time, which had just come out. She told me that people in wheelchairs can still do amazing things. Looking back, I realize how prophetic that was."
Over years this Intel team and others at the company tested and refined a system and software that would increase Hawking's efficiency. Hawking ultimately communicated with one cheek muscle, flexing it to indicate which letter to type (as letters or words scrolled by, he chose one). Intel's major advances for him, among others, were in the area of predictive software, based on Hawking's own patterns of writing/speech, that allow him to choose likely words based on letters. See also this history from Intel of its relationship with Hawking.
Stephen Hawking is considered one of the greatest physicists of our times, and his fame increased because of the enormous obstacles he overcame as a scientist and thinker in light of his ALS. “Not since Albert Einstein has a scientist so captured the public imagination and endeared himself to tens of millions of people around the world,” Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, commented in Hawking's New York Times obituary. He was given two years to live upon diagnosis, but lived for fifty more years. He came to hold one of the most prestigious chairs at the University of Cambridge--a chair previously held by Issac Newton--and is best known for his work at the nexus of gravity and quantum mechanics, especially his discovery of what's duly called Hawking's Radiation: that black holes also emit particles; that they not only receive voraciously but give. He achieved broad celebrity with the publication of A Brief History of Time in 1988, his wildly popular exploration-in-essays of cosmology.
A Briefer History of Time is his revision of that earlier book, which he undertook because many readers were eager for elaboration on certain parts of it. As the jacket says: "Although 'briefer,' this book is much more than a mere explanation of Hawking’s earlier work. A Briefer History of Time both clarifies and expands on the great subjects of the original, and records the latest developments in the field—from string theory to the search for a unified theory of all the forces of physics. Thirty-seven full-color illustrations enhance the text and make A Briefer History of Time an exhilarating and must-have addition in its own right to the great literature of science and ideas." The revision that the book represents is a collaboration with American physicist and mathematician Leonard Mlodinow, who would go on to co-author The Grand Design with Hawking.
Some additional brief testimony to the power of this association: Stephen Hawking himself referenced Moore's Law in his remarks entitled "Science in the Next Millennium" given at the White House in 1998 as part of a series of lectures to honor the millennium. In that same year, Moore donated $7.5 million to Cambridge for a new science library that would house Hawking's archive. Moore also once asked Hawking if there was a physical limit on chips, and Hawking's wry and real answer, as paraphrased in Electronics Weekly, was that it "depended on the speed of light and the atomic nature of matter." And many of Moore's obituaries, such as this one from NPR, feature a photo of him with Hawking and his wheelchair computer.
Octavo, black cloth with silver lettering on spine. Blue endpapers and thick glossy paper to support the color images. 162 pages with glossary and index. A fine book in a fine jacket. See also our copy of Hawking's Black Holes and Baby Universes inscribed to Gordon Moore. Fine / Fine. Item #1449
ISBN: 0553804367
Price: $25,000.00 save 5% $23,750.00