Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

was alive and ticking inside. It was a computer, and what hackers could do with itwould be limited only by their own imaginations.Roberts hoped that perhaps four hundred orders would trickle in while MITSperfected its assembly line to the point where it was ready to process reliable kitsto the dedicated hobbyists. He knew he was gambling his company on the Altair.In his original brainstorm he had talked about spreading computing to the masses,letting people interact directly with computers, an act that would spread the HackerEthic across the land. That kind of talk, he later admitted, had an element ofpromotion in it. He wanted to save his company. Before the article came out hewould rarely sleep, worrying about possible bankruptcy, forced retirement.The day the magazine reached the subscribers it was clear that there would be nodisaster. The phones started ringing, and did not stop ringing. And the mail boreorders, each one including checks or money orders for hundreds of dollars' worthof MITS equipment not just computers, but the add-on boards that would make thecomputers more useful. Boards which hadn't even been designed yet. In oneafternoon, MITS took orders for four hundred machines, the total response that EdRoberts had dared hope for. And there would be hundreds more, hundreds ofpeople across America who had burning desires to build their own computers. Inthree weeks, MITS' status with its bank went from a negative value to plus$250,000.How did Les Solomon describe the phenomenon? "The only word which couldcome into mind was 'magic.' You buy the Altair, you have to build it, then youhave to build other things to plug into it to make it work. You are a weird-typeperson. Because only weird-type people sit in kitchens and basements and placesall hours of the night, soldering things to boards to make machines go flicketyflock.The worst horror, the horrifying thing is, here's a company in Albuquerque,New Mexico, that nobody ever heard of. And they put together a machine which isa computer. And a magazine who publishes this article and puts it on the coversays, 'Now you can build your own computer for four hundred bucks. All you gottado is send a check to MITS in Albuquerque and they will send you a box of parts.'Most people wouldn't send fifteen cents to a company for a flashlight dial, right?About two thousand people, sight unseen, sent checks, money orders, three, four,five hundred dollars apiece, to an unknown company in a relatively unknown city,in a technically unknown state. These people were different. They wereadventurers in a new land. They were the same people who went West in the earlydays of America. The weirdos who decided they were going to California, orOregon, or Christ knows where."They were hackers. They were as curious about systems as the MIT hackers were,but, lacking daily access to PDP-6s, they had to build their own systems. What