I'd second the Kidder book. It's really the story of the people building it, and how their lives were impacted. I'd like to suggest a larger project: a histor

I'd second the Kidder book. It's really the story of the people building it, and how their lives were impacted. I'd like to suggest a larger project: a history of the features we've come to call a "computer". For example, the stack. The PDP-8 didn't have one. Programmers would roll their own in software, usually with the limitation that you could only have 1 level of call, because you only stored one return address. So; what machine gave us the first hardware version of the stack? When did using a stack become the job of the designer, not the programmer? As far as I can tell, the first one was the Burroughs B5000. In fact, I'd wager the B5000 architecture pretty much set the standard for all computers that followed. But I think that story would be really interesting. As long as it's not only about the tech, but about all the people who tried, and the one(s) who succeeded. Not just a single feature, but the set of features that we now consider to be required for a "real" computer.