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For me it was the old Tom Swift books that I found at my grandparent's house. Tom Swift and His Flying Lab, Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster, Tom Swift an
by irrational 7y ago
For me it was the old Tom Swift books that I found at my grandparent's house. Tom Swift and His Flying Lab, Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster, Tom Swift and His Diving Seacopter, Tom Swift in the Caves of Nuclear Fire, Tom Swift in the Race to the Moon, etc.
https://www.orderofbooks.com/characters/tom-swift/ https://www.orderofbooks.com/characters/tom-swift/
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=tom+swift https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=tom+swift
- jvanvleet 7y agoMine too. Tom Swift and the Bookmobile that brought them changed my life. It also had a few of the "new" Tom Swift adventures and I later learned there was an "old" series that start with Tom Swift and his Wireless Message and Tom Swift and his Electronic Rifle.
- smacktoward 7y agoUnrelated fact: Tom Swift is why tasers are called tasers. Their inventor, Jack Cover (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Cover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Cover), named them by acronymizing "Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle" (TASER).
- fouc 7y agoThat's a ridiculously cool fact.
- T-hawk 7y agoWow, same here. My family happened to find a big set of that same Tom Swift series at a yard sale when I was about 12. They were constantly my most-read books through middle and high school, and may well have had something to do with going into tech as a career.
- wikibob 7y agoMe too! I loved those books when I was young. I'd forgotten about them.
- btown 7y agoThe Tom Swift Jr. (First Series) books (the ones you mentioned above) were a core part of my childhood too - they inspired my father to become an engineer, and the very same books did the same for me. They're certainly a product of their time, with clearly-allegorical "Brungarian" antagonists and somewhat dated gender roles. But they were incredibly imaginative, adventurous, and clever. Looking back, the concept that a person could love what they do so much, that they would want a "cot in the lab," probably drove me to the startup space long before that was a thing!
- WalterBright 7y agoElon Musk is the real life Tom Swift: 1. Elon Musk and his Reusable Space Rocket 2. Elon Musk and his Electric Car 3. Elon Musk and his Tunnel Boring Machine 4. Elon Musk and his Flamethrower 5. Elon Musk and his Self Driving Car
- marta_morena 7y agoWhat does Elon Musk have to do with this? He is just someone who takes existing working things and tries to produce them in some slavery sweat shop conditions for cheap. There is essentially zero innovation involved here, even less so any "sci-fi".
- slfnflctd 7y ago> essentially zero innovation The innovation is in bringing these products to market and keeping multiple companies viable while doing so. NO ONE else has done the things he has. Put up or shut up. Edit: I'm not a fanboy and there are a lot of things about him I dislike, but the casual dismissals just irk me. If he's so unoriginal, you go do what he did.
- earenndil 7y ago> If he's so unoriginal, you go do what he did That's nonsense. Most people weren't lucky enough to sell a company for several hundreds of millions of dollars in the dot-com boom.
- WalterBright 7y agoThere are lots of centa-millionaires. None have done what Musk did. Musk got his start with Zip2, programming it himself. Any competent programmer could have done that (but didn't). Each success he used to launch a much more ambitious enterprise. When someone does that multiple times, it isn't luck. It's being good at it.
- danielg6 7y agoOr to have parents to seed said company. Not sure why you got downvoted. It’s easier to say “Go do what JK Rowling did” than to say “Go do what Elon did” lmao. I can write a fantasy series with $0. The same can’t be said necessarily for building companies.
- Darkphibre 7y agoFor me it was Tom Swift and... Danny Dunn! Can't believe that series is so hard to track down, it's been out of print for ages. Case in point: Danny discovers the pros and cons of invisibility, by learning how to pilot the professor's telepresence suit that drives a small insect-sized drone. This was in 1974. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Dunn,_Invisible_Boy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Dunn,_Invisible_Boy
- debatem1 7y agoDanny Dunn and the homework machine was what got me interested in computers! I keep a copy of that and "geometry and the imagination" together on my side table.
- Darkphibre 7y agoGosh yes!! The big reveal (he'd actually be learning all along while figuring out how to program the machine) has stuck with me forever. :)