Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

Albrecht used the four as "barkers" for a "medicine show" at their high school. The students wereentirely in charge. Twenty math classes were involved in the program, for which Albrecht hadconvinced his employers to part with the 160A and a Flexowriter for a week. After showing theclasses some math tricks, Kahn was asked if the computer could do the exercises in the back of amath text and he proceeded to do that day's homework assignment, using the Flexowriter to cut amimeograph form so that each student would have a copy. Sixty students were motivated by themedicine show to sign up for computer classes; and when Albrecht took the medicine show to otherhigh schools, the response was just as enthusiastic. Soon Albrecht triumphantly presented hismedicine show to the National Computer Conference, where his whiz kids astounded the industry'shigh priests. We don't do that, they told Albrecht. He rocked with glee. He would do it.He convinced Control Data to allow him to take the medicine show across the country, and hemoved his base to CD's Minnesota headquarters. It was there that someone showed him BASIC, thecomputer language developed by John Kemeny of Dartmouth to accommodate, Kemeny wrote, "thepossibility of millions of people writing their own computer programs ... Profiting from years ofexperience with PORTRAN, we designed a new language that was particularly easy for the laymanto leam [and] that facilitated communication between man and machine." Albrecht immediatelydecided that BASIC was it, and FORTRAN was dead. BASIC was interactive, so that peoplehungry for computer use would get instant response from the machine (FORTRAN was geared forbatch-processing). It used English-like words like INPUT and THEN and GOTO, so it was easier toleam. And it had a built-in random number generator, so kids could use it to write games quickly.Albrecht knew even then that games would provide the seductive scent that would lure kids toprogramming and hackerism. Albrecht became a prophet of BASIC and eventually co-founded agroup called SHAFT Society to Help Abolish FORTRAN Teaching.As he became more involved in the missionary aspects of his work, the Bob Albrecht simmeringunder the button-down exterior finally surfaced. As the sixties hit full swing, Albrecht swung intoCalifornia divorced, with long hair, blazing eyes, and a head full of radical ideas about exposingkids to computers. He lived at the top of Lombard Street (San Francisco's tallest, crookedest hill),and begged or borrowed computers for his evangelistic practice. On Tuesday nights he opened hisapartment up for sessions that combined wine tasting, Greek dancing, and computer programming.He was involved with the influential Midpeninsula Free University, an embodiment of the area's doyour-own-thingattitude which drew people like Baba Ram Dass, Timothy Leary, and the former AIsage of MIT, Uncle John McCarthy. Albrecht was involved in starting the loosely run "computereducation division" of the nonprofit foundation called the Portola Institute, which later spawned theWhole Earth Catalog. He met a teacher from Wood-side High School on the peninsula, namedLeRoy Finkel, who shared his enthusiasm about teaching kids computers; with Finkel he began acomputer-book publishing company named Dymax, in honor of Buckminster Fuller's trademarkedword "dymaxion", combining dynamism and maximum. The for-profit company was funded byAlbrecht's substantial stock holdings (he had been lucky enough to get into DEC'S first stockoffering), and soon the company had a contract to write a series of instructional books on BASIC.Albrecht and the Dymax crowd got hold of a DEC PDP-8 minicomputer. To house this marvelousmachine, they moved the company to a new headquarters in Memo Park. According to his deal withDEC, Bob would get a computer and a couple of terminals in exchange for writing a book for DECcalled My Computer Likes Me, shrewdly keeping the copyright (it would sell over a quarter of amillion copies). The equipment was packed into a VW bus, and Bob revived the medicine showdays, taking his PDP-8 road show to schools. More equipment came, and in 1971 Dymax became apopular hangout for young computerists, budding hackers, would-be gurus of computer education,and techno-social malcontents. Bob, meanwhile, had moved to a forty-foot ketch docked off Beach