{"product_id":"backroom-boys","title":"Backroom Boys","description":"\u003cp\u003eA brilliant, beautiful account of how British boffins triumphed across the decades in creating everything from computer games to Martian landers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book contains chapters on the Beagle II, Elite - the 80s computer game, the Blue Streak missile, Concorde, mobile phone technology and the Human Genome Project, among others.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBritain is the only country in the world to have cancelled its space  programme just as it put its first rocket into orbit. Starting with this  forgotten episode, ''Backroom Boys'' tells the bittersweet story of how  one country lost its industrial tradition and got back something else.  Sad,  inspiring, funny and ultimately triumphant, it follows the  technologists whose work kept Concorde flying, created the computer  game, conquered the mobile-phone business, saved the human genome for  the human race - and who now are sending the Beagle 2 probe to burrow in  the cinnamon sands of Mars.  \u003cbr\u003e''Backroom Boys'' is a vivid  love-letter to quiet men in pullovers, to those whose imaginings take  shape not in words but in mild steel and carbon fibre and lines of code.  Above all, it is a celebration of big dreams achieved with slender  means.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MediaPlace","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57318978126206,"sku":"NW9780571214976","price":11.34,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1379\/1261\/files\/9780571214976.jpg?v=1778639282","url":"https:\/\/mediaplace.com\/products\/backroom-boys","provider":"MediaPlace","version":"1.0","type":"link"}