Long before I disbanded formally, the Eclipse Group, in order to assist the company in applying for patents on the new machine, had gathered and had tried to figure out which engineers had contributed to Eagle’s patentable features. Some who attended found those meetings painful. There was bickering. Harsh words were occasionally exchanged. Alsing, who during the project had set aside the shield of technical command, came in for some abuse – why should his name go on any patents, what had he done? Someone even asked that question regarding West. Ironically, perhaps, those meetings illustrated that the building of Eagle really did constitute a collective effort, for now that they had finished, they themselves were having a hard time agreeing on what each individual had contributed. But, clearly, the team was losing its glue. ‘It has no function anymore. It’s like an afterbirth,’ said one old hat after the last of the patent meetings. Shortly after those meetings, Wallach, Alsing, Rasala and West received telegrams of congratulations from North-Carolina’s leader. That was a classy gesture, all agreed. The next day Eagle finally went out the Company’s door. In New York City, in faded elegance of the Roosevelt Hotel, under gilded chandeliers, on April 29, 1980, Data General announced Eagle to the world. On days immediately following, in other parts of the country and in Canada and Europe, the machine was presented to salesmen and customers, and some members of the Eclipse Group went off on so-called road shows. About dozen of the team attended the big event in New York. There was a slick slide show. There were speeches. Then there was an impressive display in a dining hall-128 terminals hooked up to a single Eagle. The machine crashed during this part of the program, but no one except the company engineers noticed, the problem was corrected so quickly and deftly. Eagle – this one consisted of the boards from Gollum – looked rather fine in skins of off – white and blue, but also unfamiliar. A surprising large number of reporters attended, and the next day Eagle’s debut was written up at some length in both the Wall Street Journal and the financial pages of the New York Times. But it wasn’t called Eagle anymore. Marketing had rechristened it the Eclipse MV/8000. This also took some getting used to. The people who described the machine to the press had never, of course, had anything to do with making it. Alsing - who was at the premiere and who had seen Marketing present machines before, ones he’s worked on directly - said: After Marketing gets through, you go home and say to yourself, “Wow! Did I do that?” And in front of the press, people who had not even been around when Eagle was conceived were described as having had responsibility for it. All of that was to be expected – just normal flak and protocol. As for the machine’s actual inventors-the engineers, most of whom came, seemed to have a good time, although some did seem to me a little out of place, untutored in this sort of performance. Many of them had brought new suits for the occasion. After the show, there were cocktails and then lunch, they occupied a table all their own. It was a rather formal luncheon, and there was some confusion at the table as to whether it was proper to take first the plate of salad on the right or the one on the left. West came, too. He did not sit with his old team, but he did talk easily and pleasantly with many of them during the day. “I had a great talk with West!”. Remarked one of the Microkids. He wore a brown suit, conservatively tailored. He looked as though he’d been wearing a suit all his life. He had come to this ceremony with some reluctance, and he was decidedly in the background. At the door to the show, where name tags were handed out, West had been asked what his title was. “Business Development” he’d said. At the cocktail party after the formal presentation, a reporter came up to him: “You seem to know something about this machine. What did you have to do with it?” West mumbled something, waving a hand, and changed the subject. Alsing overheard this exchange. It offended his sense of reality. He couldn’t let the matter stand there. So he took the reporter aside and told him, “That guy was the leader of the whole thing”. I had the feeling that West was just going through emotions and was not really present at all. When it was over and we were strolling down a busy street towards Penn Station, his mood altered. Suddenly there was no longer a feeling of forbidden subjects, as there had been around him for many months. I found myself all of a sudden saying to him: “It’s just a computer. It’s really a small thing in the world, you know.” West smiled softly. “I know it”. None of it, he said later, had come out the way he had imagined it would, but it was over and he was glad. The day after the formal announcement, Data General’s famous sales force had been introduced to the computer in New York and elsewhere. At the end of the presentation for the salesmen assembled in New York, the regional sales manager got up and gave his troops a pep talk. “What motivates people?” he asked. He answered his own question, saying, “Ego and the money to buy things that other people and their families want”? It was a different kind of machine. Clearly, the machine no longer belonged to the engineers.

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Bickering during the meetings were indicative of the fact that

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The Correct Option is C

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In this passage, the author seems to suggest that

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The Correct Option is D

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The ‘afterbirth’, a simile expressed by an old hand was with reference to

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The Correct Option is D

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It appears from Mr. West’s conversation with the author that

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The Correct Option is B

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A telegram by the North Carolina leader

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The Correct Option is A

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Apparently, one of the things that the younger computer professionals considered an honour was

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The Correct Option is B

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The launching of Eagle in New York was a gala affair

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The Correct Option is B

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According to the passage, even as the premiere of the Eagle launch seemed a grand success among those who appeared incongruous were

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The Correct Option is C

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“Just normal flak and protocol” refers to

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The Correct Option is B

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The author states that the machine no longer belonged to its makers

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The Correct Option is C

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