How the Homebrew Computer Club revolutionised computing

On this day March 5 in 1975 several very highprofile hackers and computer entrepreneurs met at the Homebrew Computer Club an early computer hobbyist group in Silicon Valley It was hosted by computer engineers and programmers Gordon French and Fred Moore at Frenchs garage in Menlo Park San Mateo County CaliforniaApple cofounders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs pictured in an article from an issue of the Homebrew Computer Club newsletter PicYouTubeApple cofounder Steve Wozniak who was one the attendees says he was inspired to design the Apple I after the first meetThe members of the Homebrew Computer Club were hobbyists with an electronic engineering or computer programming background The inaugural meeting was held on the occasion of the arrival in the area of the first MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer The Altair 8800 a microcomputer designed in 1974 based on the Intel 8080 CPU is widely recognized as the spark that ignited the microcomputer revolution The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a de facto standard in the form of the S100 bus and the first programming language for the machine was Microsofts founding product Altair BASICThe MITS Altair 8800 PicYouTubeThe meetings were held with the aim to maintain a regular open forum for people to get together to work on making computers more accessible to everyone Other technical topics were also discussed and schematics and programming tips were exchanged at these meetsThe meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club have been fictionalised in the Hollywood films Pirates of the Silicon Valley 1999 and Jobs 2013 Pirates of the Silicon Valley describes the role the Homebrew Computer Club played in creating the first personal computers although certain artistic liberties were taken during the interpretationBill Gates PicAFPThe Homebrew Computer Clubs newsletter which was published first on March 15 1975 and continued through several designs ending after 21 issues in December 1977 initiated idea of the Personal Computer and helped its members build the original kit computers like the Altair In one of the newsletters issues Microsoft founder Bill Gates famously wrote Open Letter to Hobbyists which lambasted the early hackers of the time for pirating commercial software programsSubsequent meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club were held at an auditorium at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center After the moreorless formal meetings the participants often reconvened for an informal late night swap meet in the parking lot of the Safeway store down the road as SLAC campus rules prohibited such activity on campus property Others would convene at The Oasis a bar and grill on El Camino Real in nearby Menlo Park recalled years later by a member as Homebrews other staging area These meetings were held regularly until December 1986Many of the original members of the Homebrew Computer Club continue to meet as of 2009 having formed the 6800 Club named after the Motorola now Freescale 6800 microprocessor Occasionally and variously renamed after the release of the 6800 6809 and other microprocessors the group continues to meet monthly in Cupertino CaliforniaNotable membersSteve Wozniak Apple ComputerHarry Garland and Roger Melen CromemcoThomas Todd Fischer IMSAI Division FischerFreitas CompanyGeorge Morrow Morrow DesignsPaul Terrell Byte ShopAdam Osborne Osborne ComputerBob Marsh Processor TechnologyJohn Draper Jerry Lawson creator of the first cartridgebased video game system Fairchild Channel FLiChen Wang developer of Palo Alto Tiny Basic and graphics software for the Cromemco DazzlerLee FelsensteinHomebrew Computer Club member Paul Terrell started Byte Shop the affordable computer store in Mt View California and bought the first 50 Apple I Computers from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak after they did a demonstration of the Apple I at a meeting at SLAC