The Hobby Computer Culture
==========================
Posted on May 24, 2025 by technicshistory
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[This post is part of "A Bicycle for the Mind." The complete series
can be found here.]
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From 1975 through early 1977, the use of personal computers remained
almost exclusively the province of hobbyists who loved to play with
computers and found them inherently fascinating. When BYTE magazine
came out with its premier issue in 1975, the cover called computers
"the world's greatest toy." When Bill Gates wrote about the value of
good software in the spring of 1976, he framed his argument in terms
of making the computer interesting, not useful: "...software makes
the difference between a computer being a fascinating educational
tool for years and being an exciting enigma for a few months and then
gathering dust in the closet." [1]
Even as late as 1978, an informed observer could still consider
interest in personal computers to be exclusive to a self-limiting
community of hobbyists. Jim Warren, editor of Dr. Dobb's Journal of
Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia, predicted a maximum market of
one million home computers, expecting them to be somewhat more
popular than ham radio, which attracted about 300,000. [2]
A survey conducted by BYTE magazine in late 1976 shows that these
hobbyists were well-educated (72% had at least a bachelor's degree),
well-off (with a median annual income of $20,000, or $123,000 in 2025
dollars), and overwhelmingly (99%) male. Based on the letters and
articles appearing in BYTE in that same centennial year of 1976, it
is clear that what interested these hobbyists above all was the
computers themselves: which one to buy, how to build it, how to
program it, how to expand it and to accessorize it. [3]
Discussion of practical software applications appeared infrequently.
One intrepid soul went so far as to hypothesize a microcomputer-based
accounting program, but he doesn't seem to have actually written it.
When mention of software appeared it came most often in the form of
games. The few with more serious scientific and statistical work in
mind for their home computer complained of the excessive discussion
of "super space electronic hangman life-war pong." Star Trek games
were especially popular: In July, D.E. Hipps of Miami advertised a
Star Trek BASIC game for sale for $10; in August, Glen Brickley of
Florissant, Missouri wrote about demoing his "favorite version of
Star Trek" for friends and neighbors; and in August, BYTE published,
with pride, "the first version of Star Trek to be printed in full in
BYTE" (though the author consistently misspelled "phasers" as
"phasors"). Most computer hobbyists were electronic hobbyists first,
and the electronics hobby grew up side-by-side with modern science
fiction, and shared its fascination with the possibilities of future
technology. We can guess that this is what drew them to this rare
piece of popular culture that took the future and the "what-ifs" it
poses seriously, rather than treating it as a mere backdrop for
adventure stories. [4]
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The June 1976 issue of Interface is one of many examples of the
hobbyists' ongoing fascination with Star Trek.
Other than a shared interest in computers--and, apparently, Star
Trek--three kinds of organizations brought these men together: local
clubs, where they could share expertise in software and hardware and
build a sense of belonging and community; magazines like BYTE where
they could learn about new products and get project ideas; and retail
stores, where they could try out the latest models and shoot the shit
with fellow enthusiasts. The computer hobbyists were also bound by a
force more diffuse than any of these concrete social forms: a shared
mythology of the origins of hobby computing that gave broader social
and cultural meaning to their community.
The Clubs
=========
The most famous computer club of all, of course, is the Homebrew
Computer Club, headquartered in Silicon Valley, whose story is well
documented in several excellent sources, especially Steven Levy's
book, Hackers. Its fame is well-deserved, for its role as the
incubator of Apple Computer, if nothing else. But the focus of the
historical literature on Homebrew as the computer club has tended to
distort the image of American personal computing as a whole.
The Homebrew Computer Club had a distinctive political bent, due to
the radical left leanings of many of its leading members, including
co-founder Fred Moore. In 1959, Moore had gone on hunger strike
against the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program at
Berkeley, which had been compulsory for all students since the
nineteenth century. He later became a draft resister and published a
tract against institutionalized learning, Skool Resistance. Yet even
the bulk of Homebrew's membership stubbornly stuck to technical
hobbyist concerns, despite Moore's efforts to turn their attention to
social causes such as aiding the disabled or protesting nuclear
weapons. To the extent that personal computing had a politics, it was
a politics of independence, not social justice. [5]
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Cover of the second Homebrew Computer Club newsletter, with sketches
of members. Only Fred Moore is labeled, but the man with glasses on
the far right is likely Lee Felsenstein.
Moreover, excitement about personal computing was not at all a
phenomenon confined to the Bay Area. By the summer of 1975, Altair
shipments had begun in earnest, and clubs formed across the United
States and beyond where enthusiasts could share information and ask
for help with their new (or prospective) machines. The movement
continued to grow as new companies sprang up and shipped more hobby
machines. Over the course of 1976, dozens of clubs advertised their
existence or attempted to find a membership through classifieds in
BYTE, from the Oregon Computer Club headquartered in Portland (with a
membership of forty-nine), to a proposed club in Saint Petersburg,
Florida, mooted by one Allen Swan. But, as one might expect, the
largest and most successful clubs were concentrated in and around
major metropolitan areas with a large pool of existing computer
professionals, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City. [6]
The Amateur Computer Group of New Jersey convened for the first time
in June 1975, in under the presidency of Sol Libes. Libes, a
professor at Union County College, was another of those computer
lovers working on their own home computers for years before the
arrival of the Altair, who then suddenly found themselves joined by
hundreds of like-minded hobbyists once computing became somewhat more
accessible. Libe's club grew to 1,600 members by the early 1980s, had
a newsletter and software library, sponsored the annual Trenton
Computer Festival, and is likely the only organization from the hobby
computer years other than Apple and Microsoft to still survive today.
[7]
The Chicago Area Computer Hobbyist Exchange attracted several hundred
members to its first meeting at Northwestern University in the summer
of 1975. Like many of the larger clubs, they organized information
exchange around "special interest groups" for each brand of computer
(Digital Group, IMSAI, Altair, etc.). The club also gave birth to one
of the most significant novel software applications to emerge from
the personal computer hobby, the bulletin board system--we will have
more to say on that later in this series. [8]
The most ambitious--one might say hubristic--of the clubs was the
Southern California Computer Society (SCCS) of Los Angeles, founded
in Don Tarbell's apartment in June of 1975. Within the year the club
could boast of a glossy club magazine(in contrast to the cheap
newsletters of most clubs) called Interface, plans to develop a
public computer center, and--in answer to the challenge of Micro-Soft
BASIC--ideas about distributing their own royalty-free program
library, including "'branch' repositories that would reproduce and
distribute on a local basis." [9]
Not content with a regional purview, the leadership also encouraged
the incorporation of far-flung club chapters into their organization;
in that spirit, they changed their name in early 1977 to the
International Computer Society. Several chapters opened in
California, and more across the U.S, from Minnesota to Virginia, but
interest in SCCS/ICS chapters could be found as far away as Mexico
City, Japan, and New Zealand. Across all of these chapters, the group
accumulated about 8,000 members. [10]
The whole project, however, ran atop a rickety foundation of amateur
volunteer work, and fell apart under its own weight. First came the
breakdown in the relationship between the club and the publisher of
Interface, Bob Jones. Whether frustrated with the club's failure to
deliver articles to fill the magazine (his version), or greedy to
make more money as a for-profit enterprise (the club's version),
Jones broke away to create Interface Age, leaving SCCS scrambling to
start up its own replacement magazine. Expensive lawsuits flew in
both directions. Then came the mismanagement of the club's group buy
program: intended to save members money by pooling their purchases
into a large-scale order with volume discounts, it instead lost
thousands of members' dollars to a scammer: "a vendor," as one wry
commenter put it "who never vended" (the malefactor traded under the
moniker of "Colonel Winthrop.") [11]
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The December 1976 issues of SCCS Interface and Interface Age. Which
is authentic, and which the impostor?
More lawsuits ensued. Squeezed by money troubles, the club leadership
raised dues to $15 annually, and sent out a plea for early renewal
and prepayment of multiple years' dues. The club magazine missed
several issues in 1977, then ceased publication in September. The ICS
sputtered on into 1978 (Gordon French of Processor Technology
announced his candidacy for the club presidency in March), then
disappeared from the historical record. [12]
Whatever the specific historic accidents that brought down SCCS, the
general project--a grand non-profit network that would provide
software, group buying programs and other forms of support to its
members--was doomed by larger historical forces. Though many clubs
survived into the 1980s or beyond, they waned in significance with
the maturing of commercial software and the turn of personal computer
sellers away from hobbyists and towards the larger and more lucrative
consumer and business markets. Newer computer products no longer
required access to secret lore to figure out what to do with them,
and most buyers expected to get any support they did need from a
retailer or vendor, not to rely on mutual support networks of other
buyers. One-to-one commercial relations between buyer and seller
became more common than the many-to-many communal webs of the hobby
era.
The Retailers
=============
The first buyers of Altair could not find it in any shop. Every
transaction occurred via a check sent to MITS, sight unseen, in the
hopes of receiving a computer in exchange. This way of doing
businesses suited the hardcore enthusiast just fine, but anyone with
uncertainty about the product--whether they wanted a computer at all,
which model was best, how much memory or other accessories they
needed--was unlikely to bite.
It had disadvantages for the manufacturer, too. Every transaction
incurred overhead for payment processing and shipping, and demand was
uncertain and unpredictable week to week and month to month. Without
any certainty about how many buyers would send in checks next month,
they had to scale up manufacturing carefully or risk overcommitting
and going bust.
Retail computer shops would alleviate the problems of both sides of
the market. For buyers, they provided the opportunity to see, touch,
and try out various computer models, and get advice from
knowledgeable salespeople. For sellers, they offered larger, more
predictable orders, improving their cash flow and reducing the
overhead of managing direct sales. The very first computer shop
appeared around the same time when the clubs began spreading, in the
summer of 1975. But they did not open in large numbers until 1976,
after the hardcore enthusiasts had primed the pump for further sales
to those who had seen or heard about the computers being purchased by
their friends or co-workers.
The earliest documented computer shop, Dick Heiser's Computer Store,
opened in July 1975 in a 1,000-square-foot store front on Pico
Boulevard in West Los Angeles. Heiser had attended the very first
SCCS meeting in Don Tarbell's apartment, and, seeing the level of
excitement about Altair, signed up to become the first licensed
Altair dealer. Paul Terrell's Byte Shop followed later in the year in
Mountain View, California. In March of 1976, Stan Veit's Computer
Mart opened on Madison Avenue in New York City and Roy Borrill's Data
Domain in Bloomington, Indiana (home to Indiana University). Within a
year, stores had sprouted across the United States like spring weeds:
five hundred nation-wide by July 1977. [13]
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Paul Terrell's Byte Shop at 1063 El Camino Real in Mountain View.
Ed Roberts tries to enforce an exclusive license on Altair dealers,
based on the car dealership franchise model. But the industry was too
fast-moving and MITS too cash- and capital-strapped to make this
workable. Hungry new competitors, from IMSAI to Processor Technology,
entered the market constantly with new-and-improved models. Many
buyers weren't satisfied with only Altair offerings, MITS couldn't
supply dealers with enough stock to satisfy those who were, and they
undercut even their few loyal dealers by continuing to offer direct
sales in order to keep as much cash as possible flowing in. Even Dick
Heiser, founder of the original Los Angeles Computer Store, broke
ties with MITS in late 1977, unable to sustain an Altair-only
partnership. [14]
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Dick Heiser with a customer at The Computer Store in Los Angeles in
1977. Not only is the teen here playing a Star Trek game, a picture
of the ubiquitous starship Enterprise can be seen hanging in the
background. [Photo by George Birch, from Benj Edwards, "Inside
Computer Stores of the 1970s and 1980s," July 13, 2022]
Given the number of competing computer makers, retailers ultimately
had the stronger position in the relationship. Manufacturers who
could satisfy the desires of the stores for reliable delivery of
stock and robust service and customer support would thrive, while the
others withered. [15]
But independent dealers faced competition of their own. Chain stores
could extract larger volume discounts from manufacturers and build up
regional or even national brand recognition. Byte Shop, for example,
expanded to fifty locations by March 1978. The most successful chain
was ComputerLand, run by the same Bill Millard who had founded IMSAI.
Though he later claimed everything was "clean and appropriate,"
Millard clearly extracted money and employee time from the declining
IMSAI in order to get his new enterprise off the ground. As the
company's chronicler put it, "There was magic in ComputerLand.
Started on just Milliard's $10,000 personal investment, losing
$169,000 in its maiden year, the fledgling company required no
venture capital or bank loans to get off the ground." Some small
dealers, such as Veit's Computer Mart, responded by forming a
confederacy of independent dealers under a shared front called "XYZ
Corporation" that they could use to buy computers with volume
discounts. [16]
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A ComputerLand ad from the February 1978 issue of BYTE. Note that the
store offers many of the services that most people could have only
found in a club in 1975 or 1976: assistance with assembly, repair,
and programming.
The Publishers
==============
Just like manufacturers, retailers faced their own cash flow risks:
outside the holiday season they might suffer from long dry spells
without many sales. The early retailers typically solved this by
simply not carrying inventory: they took customer orders until they
accumulated a batch of ten or so computers from the same
manufacturer, then filled all of the orders at once. But a big boon
for their cash flow woes came in the form of publications that sold
for much less than a computer, but at a much higher and steadier
volume, especially the rapidly growing array of computer magazines.
[17]
BYTE was both the first of the national computer magazines, and the
most successful. Launched in New Hampshire in the late summer of
1975, by 1978 it built up a circulation of 140,000 issues per month.
It got a head start by cribbing thousands of addresses from the
mailing lists of manufacturers such as Nat Wadsworth's
Connecticut-based SCELBI, one of the proto-companies of the
pre-Altair era. But, like so much of the hobby computer culture, BYTE
also had direct ancestry in the radio electronics hobby. [18]
Conflict among the three principal actors has muddled the story of
its origins. Wayne Green, publisher of a radio hobby magazine called
73 in Peterborough, New Hampshire, started printing articles about
computers in 1974, and found that they were wildly popular. Virginia
Londner Green, his ex-wife, worked at the magazine as a business
manager. Carl Helmers, a computer enthusiast in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, authored and self-published a newsletter about home
computers. One of the Greens learned of Helmers' newsletter, and one
or more of the three came up with the idea of combining Helmers'
computer expertise with the infrastructure and know-how from 73 to
launch a professional-quality computer hobby magazine. [19]
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The cover of BYTE's September 1976 0.01-centennial issue (i.e., one
year anniversary). The phrase "cyber-crud" and the image of a fist on
the shirt of the man at center both come from Ted Nelson's Computer
Lib/Dream Machines. Also, these people really liked Star Trek.
Within months, for reasons that remain murky, Wayne Green found
himself ousted by his ex-wife, who took over publishing of BYTE, with
Helmers as editor. Embittered, Green launched a competing magazine,
which he wanted to call Kilobyte, but was forced to change to
Kilobaud. Thus began a brief period in which Peterborough, with a
population of about 4,000, served as a global hub of computer
magazine publishing. [20]
Another magazine, Personal Computing, spun off from MITS in
Albuquerque. Dave Bunnell, hired as a technical writer, had become so
fond of running the company newsletter Computer Notes, that he
decided to go into publishing on his own. On the West Coast, in
addition to the aforementioned Interface Age, there was also Dr.
Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia--conceived by
Stanford lecturer Dennis Allison and computer evangelist Bob Albrecht
(Dennis and Bob making "Dobb"), and edited by the hippie-ish Jim
Warren, who drifted into computers after being fired from a position
teaching math at a Catholic school for holding (widely-publicized)
nude parties.
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Bunnell (right) with Bill Gates. This photo probably dates to
sometime in the early 1980s.
Computer books also went through a publishing boom. Adam Osborne,
born to British parents in Thailand and trained as a chemical
engineer, began writing texts for computer companies after losing his
job at Shell Oil in California. When Altair arrived, it shook him
with the same sense of revelation that so many other computer lovers
had experienced. He whipped out a new book, Introduction to
Microcomputers, and put it out himself when his previous publishers
declined to print it. A highly technical text, full of details on
Boolean logic and shift registers, it nonetheless sold 20,000 copies
within a year to buyers eager for any information to help them
understand and use their new machines. [21]
The magazines served several roles. They offered up a cornucopia of
content to inform and entertain their readers: industry news,
software listings, project ideas, product announcements and reviews,
and more. One issue of Interface Age even came with a BASIC
implementation inscribed onto a vinyl record, ready to be loaded
directly into a computer as if from a cassette reader. The magazines
also provided manufacturers with a direct advertising and sales
channel to thousands of potential buyers--especially important for
smaller makers of computers or computer parts and accessories, whose
wares were unlikely to be found in your local store. Finally, they
became the primary texts through with the culture of the computer
hobbyist was established and promulgated. [22]
Each of the magazines had its own distinctive character and
personality. BYTE was the magazine for the established hobbyist and
tried to cover it all: hardware, software, community news, book
reviews, and more. But the hardcore libertarian streak of founding
editor Carl Helmers (an avid fan of Ayn Rand) also shone through in
the slant of some of its articles. Wayne Green's Kilobaud, with its
spartan cover (title and table of contents only), appealed especially
those with an interest in starting a business to make money off of
their interest in computers. The short-lived ROM spoke to the
humanist hobbyist, offering longer reports and think-pieces. Dr.
Dobb's had an amateur, free-wheeling aesthetic and tone not far
removed from an underground newsletter. In keeping with its origins
as a vehicle to publish Tiny BASIC (a free Microsoft BASIC
alternative), itfocused on software listings. Creative Computing also
had a software bent, but as a pre-Altair magazine designed to target
users of BASIC in schools and universities, it took a more
lighthearted and less technical tone, while Bunnell's Personal
Computing opened its arms to the beginner, with the message that
computing was for everyone. [23]
The Mythology of the Microcomputer
==================================
Running through many of these early publications can be found a
common narrative, a mythology of the microcomputer. To dramatize it:
Until recently, darkness lay over the world of computing. Computers,
a font of intellectual power, had served the interests only of the
elite few. They lay solely in the hands of large corporate and
government bureaucracies. Worse yet, even within those organizations,
an inner circle of priests mediated access to the machine: the
ordinary layperson could not be allowed to approach it. Then came the
computer hobbyist. A Prometheus, a Martin Luther, and a Thomas
Jefferson all wrapped into one, he ripped the computer and the
knowledge of how to use it from the hands of the priests, sharing
freedom and power with the masses.
The "priesthood" metaphor came from Ted Nelson's 1974 book, Computer
Lib/Dream Machines, but became a powerful means for the post-Altair
hobbyist to define himself against what came before. The imagery came
to BYTE magazinein an October 1976 article by Mike Wilbur and David
Fylstra:
The movement towards personalized and individualized computing is an
important threat to the aura of mystery that has surrounded the
computer for its entire history. Until now, computers were understood
by only a select few who were revered almost as befitted the status
of priesthood.[24]
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In this cartoon from Wilbur and Fylstra's article on the "computer
priesthood," the sinister "HAL" (aka IBM) finds himself chagrined by
the spread of hobby computerists.
BYTE editor Carl Helmers made the historical connection with the
Enlightenment explicit:
Personal computing as practiced by large numbers of people will
help end the concentration of apparent power in the "in" group of
programmers and technicians, just as the enlightenment and
renaissance in Europe brought about a much wider understanding
beginning in the 14th century. [25]
The notion that computing had been jealously guarded by the powerful
and kept away from the people can be found as early as June 1975, in
the pages Homebrew Computer Club newsletter. In the words of club
co-founder Fred Moore:
The evidence is overwhelming the people want computers... Why did
the Big Companies miss this market? They were busy selling
overpriced machines to each other (and the government and
military). They don't want to sell directly to the public. [26]
In the first collected volume of Dr. Dobb's Journal, editor Jim
Warren sounded the same theme of a transition from exclusivity to
democracy in more eloquent language:
...I slowly come to believe that the massive information processing
power which has traditionally been available only to the rich and
powerful in government and large corporations will truly become
available to the general public. And, I see that as having a
tremendous democratizing potential, for most assuredly,
information–ability to organize and process it–is power. ...This is
a new and different kind of frontier. We are part of the small
cadre of frontiersmen who are exploring it. exploring this new
frontier. [27]
Personal Computing editor Dave Bunnell further emphasized the
potential for the computer as a political weapon against entrenched
bureaucracy:
...personal computers have already proliferated beyond most
government regulation. People already have them, just like (pardon
the analogy) people already have hand guns. If you have a computer,
use it. It is your equalizer. It is a way to organize and fight
back against the impersonal institutions and the catch-22
regulations of modern society. [28]
The journalists and social scientists who began to write the first
studies of the personal computer in the mid-1980s lapped up this
narrative, which provided a heroic framing for the protagonists of
their stories. They gave it new life and a much broader audience in
books like Silicon Valley Fever ("Until the mid-1970s when the
microcomputer burst on the American scene, computers were owned and
operated by the establishment–government, big corporations, and other
large institutions") and Fire in the Valley ("Programmers,
technicians, and engineers who worked with large computers all had
the feeling of being 'locked out' of the machine room... there also
developed a 'computer priesthood'... The Altair from MITS breached
the machine room door...") [29]
This way of telling the history of the hobby computer gave deeper
meaning to a pursuit that looked frivolous on the surface: paying
thousands of dollars for a machine to play Star Trek. And, like most
myths, it contained elements of truth. There was a large installed
base of batch-processing systems, surrounded by a contingent of
programmers denied direct access to the machine. Between the two
there did stand a group of technicians whose relation to the computer
was not unlike the relation of the pre-Vatican II priest to the
Eucharist.
But in promoting this myth, the computer hobbyists denied their own
parentage, obscuring the time-sharing and minicomputer cultures that
had made the hobby computer possible and from which it had borrowed
most of its ideas. The Altair was not an ex nihilo response to an
oppressive IBM batch-processing culture that had made access to
computers impossible. The announcement of Altair had called it the
"world's first minicomputer kit": it was the fulfillment of the dream
of owning your own minicomputer, a type of computer most of its
buyers had already used. It could not have been successful if
thousands of people hadn't already gotten hooked on the experience of
interacting directly with a time-sharing system or minicomputer.
This self-confident hobby computer culture, however--with its clubs,
its local shops, its magazines, and its myths--would soon be subsumed
by a larger phenomenon. From this point forward, no longer will
nearly every major character in the story of the personal computer
have a background in hobby electronics or ham radio. No longer will
nearly all the computer makers and buyers alike be computer lovers
who found their passion on mainframe, minicomputer, or time-sharing
systems. In 1977, the personal computer entered a new phase of
growth, led by a new class of businessmen who targeted the mass
market.
[1] BYTE (September 1975), cover;
Bill Gates, "A Second and Final Letter," Computer Notes (April 1976),
5
[2] Marilyn Potes,
"Personal Computing Spawns Diverse Magazines, Viewpoints,"
IEEE Computer (April 1978), 88.
[3] "Surveying the Field," BYTE, May 1977, 6-9.
[4] John A. Lehman, "A Small Business Accounting System,"
BYTE (June 1976), 8-12;
D.E. Hipps, "A Star Trek Product," BYTE (July 1976), 92;
Glen Brickely, Jr., "Achtung," BYTE (August 1976), 112;
"In This Byte," BYTE (September 1976), 4;
Paul Kanciruk, "Beyond Games," BYTE (February 1976), 12.
[5] John Markoff,
"A Pioneer, Unheralded, In Technology And Activism,"
New York Times, March 26, 2000; Levy, Hackers, 214-217.
[6] "Clubs, Newsletters", BYTE (August 1976), 100-102;
"Clubs, Newsletters", BYTE (April 1976), 92.
[7] "Looking Back: Remembering Those We Lost,"
U.S. 1 (January 1, 2020), 20;
John Craig, "Editor's Remarks," Kilobaud (June 1977), 6;
"Sol Libes," April 2008,
https://libes.com/sol/bio.
[8] "C.A.C.H.E. A History." June 30, 2018,
http://www.chicagocache.org/history.htm.
[9] "Group Attacking Attitudes on DP," Computerworld
(December 10, 1975), 13;
Ward Spaniol, "The President's Column," SCCS Interface (June 1976),
60.
[10] Louis G. Fields, "President's Message,"
Microcomputer Interface (August 1977), 4;
"New Clubs", SCCS Interface (December 1976), 8;
"New Clubs", SCCS Interface (January 1977), 10;
"Calendar", SCCS Interface (January 1977), 9;
John Craig, "Editor's Remarks," Kilobaud (March 1978), 5.
[11] Larry Press, "A New Year's Retrospective,"
SCCS Interface (January 1977), 4;
"Clubs Requested to Give Members' Names & Addresses,"
Intelligent Machines Journal (March 14, 1979), 19;
Stan Veit, "Computer Magazine Madness," in Steve Ditlea,
ed., Digital Deli: The Comprehensive, User-Lovable Menu of
Computer Lore, Culture, Lifestyles and Fancy
(New York: Workman Publishing, 1984), 66-69;
Madmedic, "Forgotten Fraud: World Power Systems,"
November 25, 2018,
https://medium.com/@madmedic11671/ forgotten-fraud-world-power-systems-e11320aa681d.
[12] Larry Press, "The SCCS Empire," SCCS Interface (July 1977), 6;
"Society News," SCCS Interface (July 1977), 4;
Louis G. Fields, "President's Message,"
Microcomputer Interface (August 1977), 4;
Computer History Museum, "SCCS Interface,"
https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102709251;John Craig, "Editor's Remarks," Kilobaud (March 1978), 5.
[13] "World's First Computer Store," Computer Notes (August 1975), 1;
Maggie Canon, "Computer Retailing 'Father' Reflects and Projects,"
Infoworld (April 13, 1981), 20;
"The Data Domain," Bloomingpedia,
https://www.bloomingpedia.org/wiki/The_Data_Domain;Stephanie Rick, "Entering The Store Age," in Ditlea,
ed., Digital Deli, 70-71.
[14] Canon, "Computer Retailing 'Father' Reflects and Projects," 20;
Veit, Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer, 55-56.
[15] Ray Borrill, "Early Personal Computer Companies and Sales of
Their Products," The Data Domain, Inc. (Undated, 1999-2006)
https://landsnail.com/thedatadomain/ remember-early-computer-companies.htm.
[16] Littman, Once Upon a Time in ComputerLand, 127-128 and 132;
Stan Veit, Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer, 38.
[17] Stan Veit, Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer, 18-19,
26.
[18] Carl Helmers, "On Entering Our Fourth Year,"
BYTE (September 1978), 6;
Wayne Green, "How BYTE Started," BYTE (September 1975), 6, 96;
Jack Rubin, "Interview with Nat Wadsworth and Robert Findley of
SCELBI Computer Consulting" (April 22, 1985),
https://www.scelbi.com/history-jack-rubin-interview.
[19] Green, "How BYTE Started"; Carl Helmers at Vintage Computer
Festival Southeast 1.0, April 20, 2013
(
http://www.vintage.org/2013/southeast/session.php);
Freiberger and Swaine, Fire in the Valley, 215-217.
[20] The soap opera continued with Viriginia re-marrying and becoming
co-publisher with her new husband Manfred Peschke, then later
marrying a third time to Gordon Williamson, who wrote a hit piece
against Wayne Green's 1988 candidacy in New Hampshire's
(non-binding) Republican vice-presidential primary. Harry
McCracken, "More Computer Magazine Lore: A 1983 Nastygram from
Wayne Green," Technologizer, January 21, 2024
(
https://technologizer.com/2024/01/21/ more-computer-magazine-lore-a-1983-nastygram-from-wayne-green/);
Mike Recht, "Visionary Green Lives in a Whirlwind of Controversy,"
The Lewiston (Maine) Daily Sun (July 28, 1988).
[21] Gareth Edwards, "The Rise and Fall of Steve Jobs's Greatest
Rival," Every (March 4, 2024),
https://every.to/the-crazy-ones/ the-rise-and-fall-of-steve-jobs-s-greatest-rival.
[22] "Interface Age," Apple II History
(
https://www.apple2history.org/history/ah20/);
Stan Veit, Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer, 271-272.
[23] Carl Helmers, "How I Was Born 300 Years Ahead of My Time," BYTE
(April 1977), 6.
[24] Mike Wilbur and David Fylstra,
"Homebrewery vs. the Software Priesthood," BYTE (October 1976),
90. David's brother Dan had worked with BYTE editor Carl Helmers at
Intermetrics in Cambridge, and would go on to greater fame, as we
will soon see. Thomas Haigh, "Oral History of Dan Fylstra,"
Computer History Museum (May 7, 2004), 8.
[25] Carl Helmers, "Come One, Come All!", BYTE (September 1976), 6.
[26] Fred Moore, "It's a Hobby," Home Brew Computer Club Newsletter,
no. 4, (June 7, 1975), 1.
[27] Jim Warren, "Editor's Preface," Dr. Dobb's Journal of
Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia: Running Light Without
Overbyte, v. 1. (Rochelle Park, NJ: Hayden Book Co., 1977), 3.
[28] David Bunnell, "Memo from the Publisher," Personal Computing
(March/April 1977), 6.
[29] Rodgers and Larsen, Silicon Valley Fever, 4;
Freiberger and Swaine, Fire in the Valley¸77-78.
From:
<
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The Hobby Computer Culture