Osborne career effect
Adam Osborne (see issue 357, p123) was very influential in the direction my career took. I was a mechanical engineer in 1977, but also interested in electronics, and I wanted to get into microprocessors. I discovered some of his books on the shelves of the Modern Book Company near Paddington in London, for which he was joint author with Susanna Jacobson and Jerry Kane. His books gave brilliant explanations of how things worked, and were far superior to publications from Intel and Motorola.
I borrowed an Intel Development kit with a Hex keyboard and 7-segment display from my employer, and proceeded to teach myself assembly language programming, which led me to get involved with what we now term mechatronics. Sybex was involved in
