Island Tinkerers

How Taiwan rose to global prominence in high tech manufacturing, from computer maker to the world’s leading chip manufacturer.

How did Taiwan, a former Japanese colony and the last fortress of the defeated Chinese Nationalists, ascend to such heights in high-tech manufacturing? In Island Tinkerers, Honghong Tinn tells the critical history of how hobbyists and enthusiasts in Taiwan, including engineers, technologists, technocrats, computer users, and engineers-turned-entrepreneurs, helped transform the country with their hands-on engagement with computers. Rather than engaging in wholesale imitation of US sources, she explains, these technologists tinkered with imported computing technology and experimented with manufacturing their own versions, resulting in their own brand of successful innovation.

Defying the stereotype of “the West innovates, and the East imitates,” Tinn tells the story of Taiwanese technologists’ efforts over the past six decades. Beginning in the 1960s, they grappled with the “black-boxed” computers that were newly available through international technical-aid programs. Shortly after, multinational corporations that outsourced transistor and integrated circuit assembly overseas began employing Taiwanese engineers and factory workers.  Island tinkerers developed strategies to adapt, modify, assemble, and work with computers in an inventive manner. It was through this creative and ingenious tinkering with computers that they were able to gain a better understanding of the technology, opening the door to future manufacturing endeavors that now include Acer, Foxconn, Asus, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I Embracing Electronics, 1950s
1 Network Reset: Restoring a University for Engineering
2 Negotiating Technical Aid: “Immediate and Direct” Results of Science and Engineering Education
Part II Emulating Humming Machines, 1960s
3 Tinkering with a Technological System: Mainframe Computers from Afar
4 Grappling with Machines: Late Adoption of Computers in Taiwan’s Military Alliance with the United States
5 Manufacturing Hope: Explorations in Making Minicomputers and Calculators from Scratch
Part III Technology Inscribed, 1970s–1990s
6 Assembling Electronics: Women’s Memories, Men’s Factories
7 Mass-producing Calculators: Solderers, Engineers, and Entrepreneurs
8 Incompatible Computer Dreams: Contested Computer Exports to the United States
9 The Republic of Computers: From Scoundrels to Asian Heroes
10 TSMC and the New Geopolitics of the 21st Century
Epilogue
Abbreviations
Glossary of Selected Chinese Names
Appendix: Archives and Other Collections
Notes
Bibliography
List of Figures
Index“Engrossing and meticulously researched.”
—Taipei Times

“Island Tinkerers helps us understand how impoverished east Asian countries developed some of the world’s most sophisticated and prosperous economies.”
—IEEE History Center

“[Island Tinkerers] is an important corrective to the myths that underpin tech companies’ cooperation with and co-optation by ambitious governments in Asia or the West.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books

“The book sparks valuable questions for future research, particularly in ongoing discussions about imported technology in the history of technology in East Asia… Island Tinkerers encourages scholars to enhance the conceptual frameworks we bring to the intertwined histories of technology, innovation, and manufacturing.”
—East Asian Science, Technology and Society

“Against all the saber-rattling, myth-making, and visions of world domination, Honghong Tinn’s new book, Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan’s Computing Industry, offers a timely intervention and powerful antidote.”
—The Nation“This fascinating book uses the history of computing technology as a critical lens to investigate technology and politics, from the early independence of Taiwan to its current key role in geopolitics.”
—Wiebe Bijker, Professor Emeritus, Maastricht University and Norwegian University of Science and Technology
 
“This compelling history of Taiwan’s ‘Silicon cowboys,’ probably the most influential tinkerers in history, offers rich food for thought about today’s maker culture.”
—Francesca Bray, coeditor, Cambridge History of Technology
 
“Island Tinkerers is by far the best account of the development of Taiwan’s computer and semiconductor industry. If you want to look beyond the news headlines about the chip war, start with this timely and comprehensive book.”
—Fa-ti Fan, Professor of History, Binghamton University
 
“Island Tinkerers makes a significant contribution to the literature on Taiwan's economic development, demonstrating through a richly detailed examination of a single industry the importance of human networks to that development.”
—J. Megan Greene, Professor of History, University of Kansas; author of The Origins of the Developmental State in Taiwan and Building a Nation at WarHonghong Tinn is Assistant Professor in the Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.