Computing gets personal - The Computing Universe: A Journey through a Revolution - page 149

Fig. 8.8. A meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club. The club met in the auditorium of the
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and hobbyists were encouraged to display their latest creations
in the entry lobby. Anyone who attended even once was considered a “member” and could sign up
for the newsletter. Founding member Fred Moore published the first issue of Homebrew Computer Club
Newsletter on 15 March 1975. Moore expressed the shared excitement of the group: “I expect home
computers will be used in unconventional ways - most of which no one has thought of yet.” F2

Company in Palo Alto. Inspired by the Altair, Woz started building his own
computer based on the 6502 microprocessor produced by MOS Technology, Inc.
It was the cheapest fully functional microprocessor at the time, substantially
undercutting the price of Intel's 8080. In six months, Woz had produced a cir-
cuit board for the 6502, with 4 kilobytes of memory and circuitry that allowed
it to be directly connected to a monitor and keyboard. This was a great improve-
ment in usability compared to toggling the switches on the Altair. He unsuc-
cessfully tried to interest Hewlett-Packard, his employer, in commercializing it,
but received an enthusiastic reception at the Homebrew Computer Club.
In 1971, a friend had introduced Woz to teenager Steve Jobs, a fellow
computer enthusiast ( B.8.4 ). Together, Woz and Jobs designed and sold “blue
boxes,” unauthorized devices that enabled purchasers to mimic the control
signals of the Bell Telephone Company's lines and make calls for free. After
high school, Jobs went to Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but dropped out
of full-time education and returned home to Los Altos, California. He went to
work for Atari Inc., one of the first video game companies, until he had saved
enough money to visit India to pursue his interest in Asian philosophy. When
Jobs returned from India in 1974 he immediately saw the potential in Woz's
personal computer board. Together with Ronald Wayne, Jobs and Wozniak
founded the Apple Computer Company on 1 April 1976 to market the board
that Woz had designed as a personal computer kit, later called the Apple I
( Fig. 8.9 ). Wayne later sold his shares back to Jobs and Wozniak. Jobs persuaded
the newly established Byte Shop store to order one hundred boards at $500
each. To get the funds to buy the chips and have the circuit boards manufac-
tured, Jobs had to sell his Volkswagen van and Wozniak his programmable
Hewlett-Packard calculator! They assembled the boards in the garage of Jobs's
parents' home in Los Altos, and eventually managed to sell about two hundred
computer kits and make a small profit. Jobs realized that the microprocessor-
based computer could appeal to a much broader market than just computer
enthusiasts if it was presented as a self-contained machine in a plastic case,

Fig. 8.9. Steve Wozniak demonstrated
the prototype Apple I at the Homebrew
Computer Club in 1976. For $666.66, buy-
ers received a blank printed circuit board,
a parts kit, and sixteen-page assembly
manual. The power supply, keyboard, stor-
age system, and display were not included.

B.8.4. Steve Jobs (right) and Steve
Wozniak met in a friend's garage
in the late 1960s. The two of them
bonded over their shared interest in
electronics and practical jokes. Their
first project together was to design,
produce, and sell “blue boxes” that
enabled the user to make long-dis-
tance telephone calls for free.