Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

So Marsh worked on his project, while also cooking up a scheme to buy digitalclock parts from Bill Godbout and mount them in fancy wooden cases. He had afriend who was a great woodworker. Meanwhile, Lee, president of the one-manLGC Engineering Company (named after Loving Grace Cybernetics), was workingon his terminal, which was as much a philosophic venture as a design project.Unlike your usual design in which all the parts would be controlled by one centralchip, Lee's project had a complex multi-backup way of operating. It would have a"memory" a place where characters could be stored and that memory would be ona circuit "card," or board. Other cards would get the characters from the keyboardand put characters on the screen. Instead of a processor directing the flow, thecards would constantly be sending or receiving "Gimme, gimme, gimme," they'dsay, in effect, to the inputs such as the keyboard. The memory would be theterminal's crossroads. Even if you put a microprocessor on the terminal later on, todo computer-like functions, that powerful chip would be connected to the memory,not running the whole show the task to which microprocessors are accustomed. Itwas a design that enshrined the concept of decentralization. It was alsoFelsenstein's paranoia coming to the fore. He wasn't ready to cede all the power toone lousy chip. What if this part fails? What if that one does? He was designing asif his brother were still looking over his shoulder, ready to deliver witheringsarcasm when the system crashed.But Lee had figured out how the Tom Swift Terminal could extend itself untoeternity. He envisioned it as a system for people to form clubs around, the center oflittle Tom Swift Terminal karasses of knowledge. It would revive CommunityMemory, it would galvanize the world, it would be the prime topic of conversationat Mike Quinn's and PCC potlucks, and it would even lay a foundation for thepeople's entry into computers which would ultimately topple the evil IBM regime,thriving on Cybercrud and monopolistic manipulation of the marketplace.But even as Lee's nose was reddening from the reflection of the sun on theschematics of his remarkable terminal, the January 1975 issue of PopularElectronics was on its way to almost half a million hobbyist-subscribers. It carriedon its cover a picture of a machine that would have as big an impact on thesepeople as Lee imagined the Tom Swift Terminal would. The machine was acomputer. And its price was $397.It was the brainchild of a strange Floridian running a company in Albuquerque,New Mexico. The man was Ed Roberts and his company was named MITS, shortfor Model Instrumentation Telemetry Systems, though some would come to