Missing Link: Homebrew Computer Club, nucleus of the digital revolution
In March 1975, a few technology tinkerers meet in a garage in Silicon Valley and found a computer club. Apple would not have existed without it.
The 1970s: Computers without screens or keyboards, but lots of paper.
(Image: René Meyer)
The best stories from Silicon Valley start in a garage. "I can tell you almost to the day when the computer revolution, as I see it, began – the revolution that changed everyone's life." This is what Apple founder Steve Wozniak wrote about March 5, 1975 in his biography.
On this evening, 32 nerds meet to get to know each other and exchange ideas. A computer club is born, probably the first ever. The host is Gordon French. Two qualities qualify him: he has a double garage, which turns out to be too small. And he owns a computer, a home-made computer based on the Intel 8008.
The age of the PC
It is the mid-seventies. The age of the PC is knocking at the door – of the personal computer that you can set up at home for a few hundred dollars. It is the pinnacle of a fascinating and rapid development. It began in the 1940s with hall-sized one-offs such as ENIAC. In the fifties, series production began; the IBM 650, still with electron tubes, was the first computer to be produced in large numbers (2000).
The sixties make everything much smaller and cheaper. Minicomputers such as the PDP from DEC arrive; only the size of a closet. Transistors are combined to form integrated circuits. The microprocessor is invented.
None of the big players, such as IBM, realized that after halls and wardrobes, computers would fit into shoe boxes – small and cheap enough to be of interest to a much larger target group: everyone. The digital revolution is coming from below – and the computer establishment initially has no part in it.
But the digital pioneers lacked everything: contacts, know-how, software, rooms, computer stores, trade fairs and magazines aimed at the new target group (although "Creative Computing" was very new; "BYTE" was published in summer 1975).
The Altair as a magazine cover
And so the home computer and later PC industry begins in a garage. The trigger for the club idea was the famous January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine, featuring the Altair 8800 on the cover, offered as a kit for 397 dollars or fully assembled for 498 dollars. Computers that first cost millions, then hundreds of thousands, then tens of thousands, are suddenly reasonably affordable at 500 dollars – In 1975, the average annual income of American households was around 13,000 dollars.
Whether the Altair is the first home computer is open to debate – but its enormous influence is not. The magazine is published at the end of November; and one of the first devices arrives in Menlo Park in February as a test sample for the People's Computer Company, which is not a company at all, but an organization with the aim of making computer knowledge accessible to everyone. One of the members, Fred Moore, comes up with the idea of using this as an opportunity for a meeting.
The irony of the story: Moore is the person who knows the least about computers. He is not a hardware expert, but a peace activist (the Vietnam War is in its final stages). The hippie culture was still open to computers at the time and saw them as a tool for community, self-fulfilment and decentralization. Moore wanted to use the new technology to spread ideas. He envisioned a hardware course where people could learn from each other. He is able to win over Gordon French, who is a born tinkerer.
Moore drafts an invitation in A5 format, copies it around 100 times and distributes it: "Are you building your own computer? Terminal? TV typewriter? I/O device?" (TV Typewriter is another magazine project, an unexpected success two years earlier: a device to display text on a television, using one of the first character generator circuits).
The note is headed with two possible names: "Amateur Computer Users Group" and "Homebrew Computer Club"; the second one prevails.
The founding evening
And so, on March 5, 1975, starting at 7 p.m., many interested people crowded into Gordon French's garage, which was used as a workshop. Menlo Park, 614 18th Avenue. The host cannot enjoy his creation for long: he moves to the East Coast a short time later to work for the government.
First, all the participants introduce themselves. Many work as engineers, others are hobbyists. Six of them already have a working computer, others are still working on it, some are waiting for their ordered Altair.
The Altair, the test device, naturally takes center stage. It can be switched on, but it does nothing. This gives rise to one of the founding motives for the club: what to do with a device that has no screen and no keyboard, just a front panel with LEDs and toggle switches.
In addition, Altair manufacturer MITS is completely overwhelmed by the large number of orders. Attendee Steve Dompier has first-hand experience of this. He flies to Albuquerque beforehand to pick up his Altair – and searches in vain for the expected factory: "There were two or three rooms. All they had was a box full of parts." And so ideas sprout for expansion cards – and for alternatives.
Also in the garage is Lee Felsenstein, who a little later designs the Sol-20, an Altair clone with keyboard and TV output, which also makes it onto the cover of Popular Electronics. And who later invented the Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, for Adam Osborne. Felsenstein becomes the moderator of upcoming meetings that combine lectures and networking at computer tables.
Bob Lash and Mike Fremont are the two youngest guests. They are students at "Paly", Palo Alto High School. As supervisors of the computer system, they come across the invitation in the terminal room with teletypes on the notice board. Lash is already tinkering with a computer made of TTL chips: a microprocessor is still too expensive for him. He later studied electrical engineering and computer science at Berkeley.
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The birth of Apple
One person in particular is electrified by the meeting: Steve Wozniak. He designs pocket calculators at Hewlett-Packard (where there is also an invitation). His love of computers was rekindled that evening in the garage: four years earlier, before the first microprocessor, he had already designed one, which he called Cream Soda (after the drink he consumed), with 256 bytes of RAM and eight LEDs as a display.
After the meeting, that same night, Wozniak plans a computer that is much more compact than his early work thanks to a microprocessor and (just like the Sol-20) fits into the terminal, i.e. the keyboard. This concept makes the cryptic controls of Altair & Co seem outdated. The result, of course, was the Apple I, which Wozniak first brought to the club meetings as a board and later as a finished device. (This is nicely told in the semi-documentary feature film "The Silicon Valley Story").
Steve Jobs regularly attended the meetings and helped to carry and assemble the computer. He persuades Woz to stop giving away building instructions and circuit board layouts and to produce and sell computers himself. Selling computers – would never have occurred to Woz.
At the end of the first meeting, everyone present is allowed to take a free processor: an Intel 8008, donated by Marty Spergel, who runs a mail-order store (and is later a supplier for the Apple II).
The newsletter
A few days later, the first club newsletter is published. Fred Moore summarizes the evening on one page and invites people to a second meeting on March 19, this time in the conference room of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Portola Valley.
The third newsletter is already eight pages long. It lists addresses and interests of participants, names other, more local clubs and addresses of electronics stores. Invitations are sent out for the next meeting in the lecture hall of a school. Thereafter, the location remains constant for a few years: a large lecture hall at Stanford is needed for the hundreds of participants.
(Image:Â gemeinfrei)
Give and take
The birth of the PC era is characterized by the ideals of the 1970s. The focus is on networking and helping each other, exchanging and giving things away. Most people were not yet thinking about big money. The exceptions are Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
The fact that the punched tape with a preliminary version of his commercial BASIC interpreter for the Altair was copied 50 times and distributed at a club meeting annoyed the young Gates. His famous "Open Letter to Hobbyists" appeared in the Homebrew Newsletter on February 3, 1976: Only ten percent of Altair owners had bought BASIC, complains Gates – the software, without which you can't do much with the computer.
Home computers have also become commercialized. Millions and billions are at stake; knowledge is no longer given away, but is the subject of copyright and patents, industrial espionage and lawsuits. The last official meeting took place on December 22, 1986. The homebrew idea lives on to this day, in hardware and software.
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