Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

microprocessor.Lee Felsenstein, in any case, was reluctant to take a chance on brand-newtechnology. His "junk-box" style of engineering precluded using anything butproducts which he knew would be around for a while. The success of themicrochip, and the rapid price-cutting process that occurred after the chips weremanufactured in volume (it cost a fortune to design a chip and make a prototype; itcost very little to produce one chip after an assembly line existed to chum themout), resulted in a chip shortage in 1974, and Felsenstein had little confidence thatthe industry would keep these new microprocessors in sufficient supply for hisdesign. He pictured the users of his terminal treating it the way hackers treat acomputer operating system, changing parts and making improvements ... "a livingsystem rather than a mechanical system," he'd later explain. "The tools are part ofthe regenerative process." These users would need steady access to parts. So whilewaiting for clear winners in the microchip race to develop, he took his time,pondering the lessons of Ivan Illich, who favored the design of a tool "thatenhances the ability of people to pursue their own goals in their unique way." Onsunny days in laid-back Berkeley, Lee would take his drawing board down toPeople's Park, the strip of greenery which he had helped liberate in the not-toodistantsixties, and make sketches of schematics, getting a sunburn from thereflection off the white drafting paper.Felsenstein was only one of hundreds of engineers in the Bay Area whosomewhere along the line had shed all pretenses that their interest was solelyprofessional. They loved the hands-on aspects of circuitry and electronics, andeven if many of them worked by day in firms with exotic names like Zilog and Iteland National Semiconductor, they would come home at night and build, buildfantastic projects on epoxy-based silk-screened boards loaded with etched lines andlumpy rows of ICs. Soldered into metal boxes, the boards would do strangefunctions: radio functions, video functions, logic functions. Less important thanmaking these boards perform tasks was the act of making the boards, of creating asystem that got something done. It was hacking. If there was a goal at all, it wasconstructing a computer in one's very own home. Not to serve a specific function,but to play with, to explore. The ultimate system. But these hackers of hardwarewould not often confide their objective to outsiders, because, in 1974, the idea of aregular person having a computer in his home was patently absurd.Still, that's where things were going. You could sense an excitement everywherethese hardware hackers congregated. Lee would get involved in technicaldiscussions at the PCC potlucks. He also attended the Saturday morning bullshitsessions at Mike Quinn's junk shop.Quinn's was the Bay Area counterpart of Eli Heffron's at Cambridge, where the