Black Holes and Baby Universes (inscribed to Intel founder Gordon Moore)
NY: Bantam, 1993. First edition. Hardcover. An incredible association copy, inscribed 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: "For Gordon and Betty Moore, with every good wish, yours [Stephen Hawking] + Elaine Hawking, This print of SW Hawking, 11 April 1996" (the inscription incorporates Hawking's printed byline). Uncommon or scarce signed; the only signed copy on the market as of 2024. A powerful association because Hawking's computer and voice-synthesizing technology were substantially provided by Intel at Moore's directive. Interestingly, most sources describe that Hawking and Moore met at a conference in 1997, but this copy establishes that they came together earlier.
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.
Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays is Hawking's second book, a collection of thirteen essays and one concluding interview, some of them personal, some of them pure science. Topics explored among others include imaginary time, scientists' efforts to find a complete unified theory that would predict everything in the universe, free will, the value of life, his perceptions of death, science fiction, and his negotiation of his ALS. "Using his characteristic mastery of language, his sense of humor, his commitment to plain speaking, and his disdain for pompousness, Stephen Hawking invites us in this book to know him better and to share his passion for the voyage of intellect and imagination that has opened new ways to understanding the very nature of the universe."
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 paper boards, cloth spine with gilt lettering. 182 pages with index. A red ribbon is laid in as a bookmark. A fine copy with just a few bits of what looks like residual black cloth from the bindery on the front seam (hinge) of the spine; still fine. In a near fine jacket with a little rubbing and one small pressure dent along spine on front panel. A special copy. See also our copy of Hawking's A Briefer History of Time inscribed to Gordon Moore. Fine / Near fine. Item #1450
ISBN: 9780553095234
Price: $30,000.00 save 5% $28,500.00