ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers the computer industry as an example of a high technology sector and explores its recent development in Britain. It focuses on technological development and the way this has shaped the competitive structure of the computer industry. The book examines the period from 1948, when a stored-program computer was used successfully for the first time in the world at the University of Manchester, until 1979. It contains the period from 1979 to the present day and charts the growing crisis in the British computer industry and the governments response to it. The book argues that higher rates of new firm formation are intimately connected with the advent of microelectronics and the subsequent development of the microcomputer. It describes the themes of the historical development of the computer industry, the rationalisation of International Computers Ltd. and new firm formation.
