History Of The Microcomputer Revolution
In early 1975 - just a couple months after the first microcomputer kit
had appeared on the cover of Popular
Electronics magazine - a group of electronic hobbyists in California's
Silicon Valley held a meeting to start a computer club. The first micro
- the Altair 8800 computer - was demonstrated at this meeting, and other
meetings followed, attended by more people. They put the name of the club
up for a vote, and decided on the Homebrew Computer Club.
Many of the early attendees went on to become famous names in the emerging
industry. The club also become somewhat infamous because of an incident
involving the pirating of one of the first computer programs - a paper
tape copy of Bill Gates' first version of Basic - allegedly acquired by
a club member who distributed for free to anyone who wanted it.
One of the people in attendance was a young man named Steve Wozniak, who
worked for Hewlett Packard. He also did free lance design work for a game
company called Atari, and had met a friend there - another Steve - Steve
Jobs. Wozniak was a dreamer, designer, and builder, well liked by people
and called Woz by his friends - while Jobs was a hard driven entrepreneur,
a couple years older. Inspired by what he saw at the Homebrew meetings,
Woz set out to build his own computer for the fun of it. He also decided
to use a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, because it was cheap - around
$ 20 - and it looked like it could do a lot of things. Woz also wrote his
own version of Basic for his computer, which they named the Apple
I.
He showed it at one of the Homebrew meetings, impressing the audience,
but most particularly his friend Steve Jobs who immediately decided they
should start their own computer company, and come out with an improved
model - an Apple II. They
sold some of their possessions, including a Volkswagen bus, and started
building computers in their garage, although Woz continued working full-time
at HP.
Eventually they drew the attention of an ex-Intel marketing executive,
who was able to see the potential and arrange for venture capital for the
company - providing Woz would quit his job at HP and dedicate himself full-time
to the Apple II project.
After some convincing, he agreed, and the rest - as they say a lot in the
microcomputer industry - is history.
The Apple II was a unique
machine in the industry, with its sleek sexy design, its Apple logo, its
open architecture - allowing anyone to design plugin cards to it, and its
capability to hook up to a color tv set and give you sound, color, and
graphics - things you just didn't get with the monochrome CP/M computers
it competed against. My first computer was an Apple
II and I wish I still had it as much as I'd like to have my Ford Model
A from my high school days.
The year was now 1977, and Apple computer
began a meteoric rise - elevating both Steve's to millionaire wunderkindt
status. The Apple II became
one of the hottest computers in the industry - everyone wanted one. Dozens
of developers began writing software for the Apple
II; games, home programs, even business accounting programs.
By 1979 Apple competed strongly against
8080-based CP/M systems which dwarfed them both in size and price. A CP/M
business computer at that time could easily cost $ 10K without any software.
An Apple II with 48K of
ram, 1 floppy disk drive, and a green NEC monitor sold for about $2500.
Where there were by now over 100 manufacturers of CP/M clones, Apple was very tightly controlled and sold through an authorized dealer network.
by 1979 the entire thrust of the industry had changed - microcomputers
were no longer targeted at hobbyists and hackers - they were targeted at
business users, both small business and corporations.
But what really contributed to Apple's
success - and what really launched the microcomputer industry from a hobbyist
market to a serious business users market- was THE KILLER APPLICATION.
And next week, we'll learn about the software
program that let microcomputers do what mainframe and minicomputer users
couldn't.
For Raw Bytes, this is Frank Delaney
Copyright © 1995 MTA Micro Technology Associates
Frank Delaney
928 E. Thurston Spokane, WA 99203 (509) 624-7286/7230
Raw Bytes Computer News - KPBX FM 91.1 National Public Radio
In computer news this week (April 6, 1995):
Next Segment | Previous
Segment | Table of Contents
Copyright © 1997-2006 William Thomas Sanderson.
Portions Copyright © 1995 MTA Micro Technology Associates
Frank Delaney
All Rights Reserved.
Free counters provided by Andale.
Page ID: $Workfile: mits0024.asp $ $Revision: 1.2 $ $Last Updated:
03/12/04 05:43:00 PM
$