Homebrew Computer Club

On this day in 1975, the first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club was held in Gordon French's Menlo Park, California garage.

They met because a publication from the People's Computer Company had sent them a MITS Altair computer for review. The PCC was a merger of hippie and computer cultures, and was very prominent in the early history of personal computing. They originated the idea of open source software, free for all, by publishing code in their publication, Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia. Because the code they published was without copyright, users were able to study and modify it.

The Altair qualifies as the first personal computer but just barely. I recall first programming in the mid-70's using punch cards on a million dollar computer that lived in its own climate controlled aquarium inside its own house. The Altair was a little bigger than a shoebox, and was an unholy nightmare to program. You entered machine language one line at a time by flipping a bunch of switches on the front panel, each one representing a 1 or a 0. Programming in machine language is what they make you do in the 9th circle of Hell.

Among the attendees at that meeting of the HCC was Steve Wozniak, who credited the difficulty of programming the Altair as his inspiration for creating the first Apple computers. Also in attendance was Adam Osborne, creator of the first portable computer. Well, portable is a charitable description. It was as big as a suitcase, twice as heavy and had a handle. Several other very high profile hackers and computer entrepreneurs emerged from the ranks of the HCC.

The newsletter published by the HCC was one of the most influential forces in forming the culture of Silicon Valley. Perhaps the most high profile item published in the newsletter was Bill Gates' "Open letter to hobbyists," which lambasted the early hackers of the time for violating the copyrights of software. Gates and the People's Computer Company created the two poles around which the software industry has revolved ever since -- locked down intellectual property and open source.

One of the attendees was Paul Terrell, a local sales rep for MITS. He left to start the Byte Shop, an affordable computer store in Mountain View, California, and bought the first 50 Apple I computers from Steves Wozniak and Jobs.

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