Sun Industry Tanning Bed

In 1982, a little upstart named Sun was making waves in the high-tech industry with its groundbreaking workstation technology, even as early competitors dismissed the company as not worth losing sleep over. Since then, Sun Microsystems has become a formidable presence in the industry, making its own rules and taking no prisoners, and is currently poised to reach the highest point of its ascendancy--the challenge of Microsoft's dominance over the future of computing. The driving force behind this once fledgling company is a man who has been described as brash, unconventional, ambitious, forward-looking, and sometimes even his own worst enemy. Scott McNealy turned Sun into the multibillion-dollar success it is today--a developer of innovative software like Java that is revolutionizing the computing landscape. High Noon is the inside story of Sun's rise to power, from its shaky start in Silicon Valley through its transformation under the aggressive and inspirational leadership of McNealy. Karen Southwick reveals the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of McNealy and Sun, with candid interviews from the key players and insights into the inner workings of the high-tech industry. This book examines how scrappy underdog Sun overcame its larger and supposedly tougher competitors, combining hard work, tenacity, and talented people to build a more innovative and flexible company. You'll learn how McNealy moved Sun up the industry food chain, challenging more established companies like Hewlett-Packard and Digital Equipment by expanding Sun's product line and refocusing the business. High Noon expertly chronicles McNealy's triumphant history with Sun, from his early days asvice president of manufacturing to a CEO known for shooting straight from the hip without regard for the consequences.

Harnessing the sun's energy has been one of mankind's oldest fantasies, an elusive dream that has haunted us since the days when Archimedes allegedly used mirrors to set fire to hostile Roman ships and Leonardo da Vinci first proposed that the same technology could be used for peaceful means. But it was not until the Industrial Revolution, with its insatiable demand for fuel, that modern inventors--like Prometheus carrying fire from Mt. Olympus--began to build machines capable of channeling the sun's rays into usable energy. "The Power of Light is a dramatic narrative of those Prometheans and their furious technological quest to create the ultimate "Sun Machine." Told with a fervent passion, and without chastising or proselytizing, the story opens during the last gasps of the Industrial Revolution. With its grimy cities, its black and billowing smokestacks, it was a time for the realization of previously unimaginable projects, a time that gave birth to a cornucopia of new inventions and visionary dreamers--some bound for immortality, and others whose genius would be forever shrouded in obscurity. In this original investigation into a little-known chapter of the history of science, we follow the story of Frank Shuman, a Brooklyn-born, self-educated inventor who dreamed up a 1000-horsepower solar-powered behemoth to pump the Nile River onto parched Egyptian cotton fields--a dream that would be deferred, overshadowed by the hand of fate and the bugle-call of world war. Along Shuman's path, we meet the luminaries of solar invention--Augustin Mouchot, William Adams, Aubrey Eneas, and a host of others--all the while tracing the incredible saga of solar power, from its roots in ancienthistory to its optimistic dawning in the industrial age to its impending triumph today.