Missing Link: The PC grass root movement meets in a garage

The 1960s make everything much smaller and cheaper. The mini computers such as the PDP of DEC come; Only as big as a wardrobe. Transistors are summarized into integrated circuits. The microprocessor is invented.

None of the big ones like IBM has on the screen that computers will fit into shoe boxes in the future after halls and restricts computers – small and cheap enough to be interesting for a much larger target group: everyone. The digital revolution comes from below-and the computer establishment initially has no share in it.

But the digital pioneers lack everything: contacts, know-how, software, rooms, computer shops, trade fairs and magazines that are aimed at the new target group (although: The “Creative Computing” is very fresh; the “byte” comes 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 is the famous edition of the Popular Electronics magazine from January 1975. On the cover: the Alair 8800, offered as a kit for $ 397 or ready for $ 498. Computers that only cost millions, then hundreds of thousands, then tens of thousands, they are suddenly affordable at $ 500 – in 1975 the average annual income of American households was around $ 13,000.

You can discuss whether the Altair is the first home computer – but not his enormous influence. The magazine appears at the end of November; And one of the first devices arrives in Menlo Park in February, as a test pattern 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 ​​taking this as an occasion for a meeting.

Moore designs an invitation in the A5 format, copies it around 100 times and distributes it: “Build your own computer? Terminal? TV Typewriter? I/O device?” (TV Typewriter is another magazine project, an unexpected success two years before: a device to display text on a television, using one of the first generator circuits.)

The note is overwritten with two possible names: “Amateur Computer Users Group” and “Homebrew Computer Club”; The second prevails.

The founding evening

And so on March 5, 1975 from 7 p.m., many interested people joined in the garage used as a workshop by Gordon French. Menlo Park, 614 18th Avenue. The host cannot enjoy his creation long: a short time later he moves to the east coast to work for the government.

First, all participants imagine. Many work as engineers, others are hobbyists. Six of them already have a functional computer, other other work on it, some are waiting for their ordered altair.

The altair, the test device, is of course the focus. He can be switched on, but he doesn't do anything. From this one of the founding motifs for the club grows: What do you start with a device that does not have a screen and no keyboard, but only a front panel with LEDs and tipping switches.

In addition, Altair manufacturer is completely overwhelmed with the many orders. Participant Steve Dompier knows that first -hand. He previously flies to Albuquerque to pick up his Altair – and searches in vain the expected factory: “There were two or three rooms. Everything they had was a box full of parts.” And so ideas for expansion cards sprout – and for alternatives.

Also in the garage is Lee Felsenstein, which designs the SOL-20 a little later, an oldair clone with a keyboard and TV output, which also makes it onto the Popular Electronics cover. And which later invented Osborne 1 for Adam Osborne, the first successful portable computer. Felsenstein will meet the moderator, the lectures and linking of contacts at computer tables.

Bob Lash and Mike Fremont are the two youngest guests. You are students on the “Paly”, the Palo Alto High School. As a supervisor of the computer system, you will find the invitation in the terminal room on the black board. Lash is already tinkering with a computer from TTL chips: a microprocessor is still too expensive for him. He later studied electrical engineering and computer science in Berkeley.

The birth of Apple

Above all, the meeting elects one: Steve Wozniak. He designs calculator at Hewlett-Packard (where an invitation also hangs). On the evening in the garage, his love for computers will be rejected: four years earlier, before the first microprocessor, he has already designed a Cream Soda (after the drink consumed), with 256 bytes RAM and eight LEDs as a display.

After the meeting, the same night, Wozniak plans a computer that is much more compact thanks to a microprocessor than its early work and (just like the SOL-20) fits into the terminal, i.e. the keyboard. This concept makes the cryptic controls appear out of date. From this, of course, the Apple I, which Wozniak is initially a board and later as a finished device, bring this to the club meetings. (This is told nicely in the semi-documentary feature film “The Silicon Valley Story”.)

Steve Jobs is regular at the meetings and helps to carry and build the computer. He persuades WOZ, construction instructions and board layouts to no longer give away, but to produce and sell computers himself. To sell computers – that would not have occurred to WOZ.

At the end of the first meeting, everyone of those present can take a free processor with them: an Intel 8008, donated by Marty Summel, which runs a shipping shop (and later is a supplier for Apple II).

The newsletter

A few days later he appears First club newsletter. Fred Moore summarizes the evening on one side and invites you to a second meeting on March 19, this time into the conference room of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Portola Valley.

The third newsletter is already eight pages. He lists addresses and interests of participants, calls other, more local clubs and addresses of electronics shops. Invited to the next meeting in the lecture hall of a school. After that, the place remains constant for a few years: For the hundreds of participants, a large lecture hall in Stanford is needed.

Give and take

The birth of the PC era is characterized by the ideals of the 1970s. Networking and mutual help are in the foreground, it is exchanged and given away. Most of them don't think about the big money. The exceptions are Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

The young gates annoys that the hole strip with a pre-version of its commercial basic interpreter for the Altair is 50 times and distributed at a club meeting. His famous “appears in the Homebrew Newsletter of February 3, 1976”Open letter to hobbyists“: Only ten percent of the Altair owners would have bought the basic, Gates complains-the software, without which you can't do much with the computer.

The home computers have also commercialized. It is about millions and billions; Knowledge is no longer given away, but is the subject of copyright and patents, industrial espionage and complaints. The last official meeting took place on December 22, 1986. The homebrew idea continues to this day, with hardware and software.