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Unread 24-05-2003, 13:49
Andrew Andrew is offline
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Join Date: May 2002
Location: Little Rock, AR
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On recommendation from one of my team members, I got copies of "Gearheads" for our 2003 team award winners. Got the books in yesterday and wanted to give it a read (make sure that no "bad" content goes out to the HS students, don't you know?).

This is an excellent book. As has been mentioned, if focuses mainly on the commercial aspects of the sport. Gives a lot of neat background info on how the various sporting venues (Robot Wars, Battlebots, Robotics) arose and how they are interrelated.

The book was surprisingly objective. Whereas it seems to work overtime to create a sympathetic character out of Mark Thorpe (the creator of Robot Wars), it does bring out his faults as well. Likewise for many of the other "characters" in the book.

I was a little disappointed with the tone directed at FIRST, as expressed on page 279, "That year [2002], in what was surely a continuing disappointment for the famous inventor [dean kamen], the FIRST competition was broadcast on the seldomly watched NASA TV - the space agency's satellite feed." The book goes to great lengths to discuss how television has under-mined the sport aspect of robotic sport. FIRST has remained true to its ideals and is slowly accomplishing its objectives.

The book gives a fairly accurate history of FIRST from its inception. In an astute insight, the author picks up on the inherent contradiction brewing within the FIRST community, the dichotomy between FIRST's goal to inspire students to become "participants" and the goal to become more "media friendly." For those of you who missed it, you should go to the archive of 2003's kick-off, where Dean indicates the difference between the Superbowl which will be held in Reliant and the FIRST championships. In the Superbowl, there will be 10,000 spectators and 22 participants. In FIRST, there are 10,000 participants.

One erratum, on page 208, the book refers to 1999's Double Trouble, but the events depicted are 2000's Co-opertition FIRST.
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