Full Interview The Homebrew Club - Altair 8800 - Lee Felsenstein, Steve Wozniak ...
The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist group in Menlo Park, California, which met from March 1975 to December 1986. The club played an influential role in the development of the microcomputer revolution and the rise of that aspect of the Silicon Valley information technology industrial complex.
Several high-profile hackers and computer entrepreneurs emerged from its ranks, including Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the founders of Apple Computer. With its newsletter and monthly meetings promoting an open exchange of ideas, the club has been described as "the crucible for an entire industry" as it pertains to personal computing[1]
History[]
The Homebrew Computer Club was an informal group of electronic enthusiasts and technically minded hobbyists who gathered to trade parts, circuits, and information pertaining to DIY construction of personal computing devices.[2] It was started by Gordon French and Fred Moore who met at the Community Computer Center in Menlo Park. They both were interested in maintaining a regular, open forum for people to get together to work on making computers more accessible to everyone.[3]
The first meeting of the club was held on March 5, 1975 in French's garage in Menlo Park, San Mateo County, California, on the occasion of the arrival in the area of the first MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer, a unit sent for review by People's Computer Company.[4] Steve Wozniak credits that first meeting as the inspiration to design the Apple I.[5] The next few meetings were held at a large home in Atherton, California, which had been used as a preschool. Subsequent meetings were held at an auditorium at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), until 1978, when meetings moved to the Stanford Medical School.[6]
An anecdote from member Thomas "Todd" Fischer relates that after the more-or-less "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, at the suggestion of Roger Melen, convened at The Oasis,[7] a bar and grill they considered a pub located on El Camino Real in nearby Menlo Park, recalled years later by a member as "Homebrew's other staging area".[8] As Steven Levy wrote about the Oasis gatherings:
| “Piling into wooden booths with tables deeply etched with the initials of generations of Stanford students, Garland and Melen and Marsh and Felsenstein and Dompier and French and whoever else felt like showing up would get emboldened by the meeting's energy and pitchers of beer.[9]” |
Many of the original members of the Homebrew Computer Club continued 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, California.
Media portrayals[]
The 1999 made-for-television movie Pirates of Silicon Valley (and the book on which it is based, Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer) describes the role the Homebrew Computer Club played in creating the first personal computers, although the movie took the liberty of placing the meeting in Berkeley and misrepresented the meeting process.[10] The club is also depicted in the 2013 film Jobs, as well as in the 1996 PBS documentary series Triumph of the Nerds.[11][12]
See also[]
References[]
- ↑ McCracken, Harry. "For One Night Only, Silicon Valley's Homebrew Computer Club Reconvenes", November 12, 2013. Retrieved on November 12, 2013. “…the open exchange of ideas that went on at its biweekly meetings did as much as anything to jumpstart the entire personal-computing revolution. It was the crucible for an entire industry.”
- ↑ Homebrew And How The Apple Came To Be. atariarchives.org.
- ↑ What the Dormouse Said by John Markoff. ISBN: 0-670-03382-0.
- ↑ Ganapati, Priya. "March 5, 1975: A Whiff of Homebrew Excites the Valley", Wired, March 5, 2009.
- ↑ Wozniak, Steve. "iWoz", W.W. Norton & Company, p. 150. “After my first meeting, I started designing the computer that would later be known as the Apple I. It was that inspiring.”
- ↑ "Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer".
- ↑ Silicon Valley pub that helped birth PC industry to close because of high rent. Conde Nast (February 24, 2018). Retrieved on February 25, 2018.
- ↑ Balin, Fred. "Homebrew's 26th Birthday Commemoration." Email dated March 20, 2001
- ↑ "Hackers", Anchor press/Doubleday, 1984, p. 213. “Piling into wooden booths with tables deeply etched with the initials of generations of Stanford students, Garland and Melen and Marsh and Felsenstein and Dompier and French and whoever else felt like showing up would get emboldened by the meeting's energy and pitchers of beer.”
- ↑ Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999), Internet Movie Database. Accessed 2020-02-09.
- ↑ Jobs (2013), Internet Movie Database. Accessed 2020-02-09.
- ↑ The Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996), Internet Movie Database. Accessed 2022-05-19.
External links[]
- Homebrew Computer Club Newsletters
- Homebrew Computer Club Newsletters as searchable PDFs
- Life Outside the Mainframe: Remembering Fred Moore
- In Search of the Valley, a 2006 documentary on Silicon Valley which includes a section on the homebrew computer club and interviews with Lee Felsenstein and Steve Wozniak.
- Homebrew Computer Club on Jolitz Heritage site
- Lee Felsenstein and the Homebrew Computer Club, A History of Free Hardware Design
- The Homebrew Computer Club 2013 Reunion
- Homebrew Computer Club at Wikimedia Commons
- Homebrew Computer Club at Wikipedia