Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
large volume lists of helpful tools, in this case for the creation of a more just and
environmentally sensitive society. The definition of “tools” was broad; the catalog's lists
included books, classes, garden tools, camping equipment, and (in later issues) early
personal computers. “With the
Whole Earth Catalog
, Stewart Brand offered a generation
of computer engineers and programmers an alternative vision of technology as a tool for
individual and collective transformation” [24, p. 104].
The People's Computer Company was a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to ed-
ucating people on how to use computers. One of its activities was publishing a newspa-
per. The cover of the first issue read: “Computers are mostly used against people instead
of for people, used to control people instead of to free them, time to change all that—we
need a PEOPLE'S COMPUTER COMPANY” [25]. Typical issues contained program-
ming tips and the source code to programs, particularly educational games written in
BASIC. The newspaper's publisher, Bob Albrecht, said, “I was heavily influenced by the
Whole Earth Catalog
. I wanted to give away ideas” [24, p. 114]. The People's Computer
Company also set up the People's Computer Center in a strip mall in Menlo Park. The
center allowed people to rent teletype terminals connected to a time-shared computer.
A large number of teenagers were drawn to computing through Friday evening game-
playing sessions. Many users wrote their own programs, and the center promoted a
culture in which computer enthusiasts freely shared software with each other.
In 1975 the Homebrew Computer Club, an outgrowth of the People's Computer
Company, became a meeting place for hobbyists interested in building personal com-
puters out of microprocessors. A company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, called MITS,
had recently begun shipping the Altair 8800 personal computer, and during the first few
Homebrew Computer Club meetings, members showed off various enhancements to
the Altair 8800. Progress was frustratingly slow, however, due to the lack of a higher-level
programming language.
Three months after the establishment of the Homebrew Computer Club, MITS
representatives visited Palo Alto to demonstrate the Altair 8800 and the BASIC inter-
preter created by Paul Allen and Bill Gates, who had a tiny company called Micro-Soft.
The audience in the hotel conference room was far larger than expected, and during
the overcrowded and chaotic meeting somebody acquired a paper tape containing the
source code to Altair BASIC. More than 70 copies of the tape were handed out at the
next meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club. After that, free copies of the interpreter
proliferated. Some hobbyists felt that the asking price of $500 for the BASIC interpreter
was too high, considering that the Altair computer itself cost only $395 as a kit or $495
preassembled [22].
Bill Gates responded by writing “An Open Letter to Hobbyists” that was reprinted
in a variety of publications. In the letter he asserted that less than 10 percent of all Altair
owners had purchased BASIC, even though far more people than that were using it.
According to Gates, the royalties Micro-Soft had received from Altair BASIC made the
time spent on the software worth less than $2 an hour. He wrote, “Nothing would please
me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with
good software,” but the theft of software created “very little incentive” for his company
to release new products [22].
