Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

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things done.Bob Albrecht did not like the idea, so there was no hardware class.Fred Moore got to talking about this with another frustrated hanger-on in the PCCorbit, Gordon French, the consulting engineer who'd built "homebrewed," as thehardware hackers called it a computer which more or less worked, centered on theIntel 8008 chip. He named his system Chicken Hawk. Gordon French liked tobuild computers the way people like to take engines out of automobiles and rebuildthem. He was a gangly fellow with a wide, crooked smile and long, prematurelygray hair. He loved to talk computers, and it sometimes seemed, when GordonFrench got going on the subject, a faucet opened up that would not stop until asquad of plumbers with big wrenches and rubber coats came to turn off the flow. Ayearning to meet people with similar likes led him to PCC, but French wasunsuccessful in his application to be on the PCC board of directors. He was alsounhappy that the Wednesday potlucks seemed to be phasing out. The Altair wasfor sale, people were going crazy, it was time to get together, and there was no wayto do it. So French and Moore decided to start up a group of people interested inbuilding computers. Their own hardware group, and it would be full of goodcomputer talk, shared electronic technique, and maybe a demonstration or two ofthe latest stuff you could buy. Just a bunch of hardware hackers seeing what mightcome of a somewhat more than random meeting.So on crucial billboards in the area at PCC, at Lawrence Hall, at a few schools andhigh-tech corporations Fred Moore tacked up a sign that read:AMATEUR COMPUTER USERS GROUP HOMEBREWCOMPUTER CLUB ... you name it. Are you building your owncomputer? Terminal? TV Typewriter? I/O device? or some otherdigital black magic box? Or are you buying time on a time-sharingservice? If so, you might like to come to a gathering of people withlikeminded interests. Exchange information, swap ideas, help workon a project, whatever...The meeting was called for March 5, 1975, at Gordon's Menio Park address. FredMoore and Gordon French had just set the stage for the latest flowering of thehacker dream.
10The Homebrew <strong>Computer</strong> ClubTHE fifth of March was a rainy night in Silicon Valley. All thirty-two participantsin the first meeting of the yet unnamed group could hear the rain while sitting onthe hard cement floor of Gordon French's two-car garage.Some of the people at the meeting knew each other; others had come into randomcontact through the flier that Fred Moore had posted. Lee Felsenstein and BobMarsh had driven down from Berkeley in Lee's battered pickup truck. BobAlbrecht had come over to give the group his blessing, and to show off the Altair8800 that MITS had loaned PCC. Tom Pittman, a free-lance engineer who'd builtan improbable homebrew computer around the early Intel 4004 chip, had met FredMoore at a computer conference the previous month and had been looking forwardto meeting others with similar interests. Steve Dompier, still waiting for the rest ofhis Altair parts, had seen the notice posted at Lawrence Hall. Marty Spergel had asmall business selling electronic parts and figured it would be a good idea to rap tosome engineers about chips. An engineer at Hewlett-Packard named Alan Baumhad heard about the meeting and wondered if the talk would be of the new, lowcostcomputers; he dragged along a friend he'd known since high school, a fellowHP employee named Stephen Wozniak.Almost every person in the garage was passionate about hardware, with thepossible exception of Fred Moore, who envisioned sort of a social group in whichpeople would "bootstrap" themselves into learning about hardware. He didn't quiterealize this was, as Gordon French would later put it, "the damned finest collectionof engineers and technicians that you could possibly get under one roof," Thesewere people intensely interested in getting computers into their homes to study, toplay with, to create with..., and the fact that they would have to build thecomputers was no deterrent. The introduction of the Altair had told them that theirdream was possible, and looking at others with the same goal was a thrill in itself.And in the front of Gordon French's cluttered garage workshop you could neverhave fit a car in there, let alone two there it was, an Altair. Bob Albrecht turned iton and the lights flashed and everyone knew that inside that implacable front panelthere were seething little binary bits, LDA-ing and JMP-ing and ADD-ing.
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HACKERSHeroes of the Computer Revol
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Contents●●●●●●●●●
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hero.Hackers like Richard Greenblat
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Steve DompierHomebrew member who fi
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"Uncle" John McCarthyAbsent-minded
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Dan SokolLong-haired prankster who
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Part OneTrue HackersCambridge:The F
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these machines to punch holes in th
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The clubroom was dominated by the h
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That spring of 1959, a new course w
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of course, was what those Signals a
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officious priests. The technician i
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Deutsch's comments would turn out t
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At that time, only a few people in
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Carroll's poem with the line "The t
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2The Hacker EthicSOMETHING new was
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that easy flow of information.Mistr
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instruction which contained the num
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focus, made their lives adventurous
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occupying valuable space within the
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3SpacewarIN the summer of 1961, Ala
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was a brand-new firm called Digital
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Dennis had written the original of
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The TMRC hackers were not the only
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exerted on others were totally outl
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All of this was actually a signific
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that often formed in the aftermath
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heavy star would be in the center,
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F. J. Corbate, who would seek some
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changed irrevocably the day in 1954
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doing. Then you can see your offspr
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709, or working routines with a new
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hacking them, he would. He would si
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They went back loaded with Chinese
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Though some hackers led somewhat ac
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Despite these odd personal traits,
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impossible was a useful LISP on a P
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opponent could get out of this was
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Dance, phone lines, dance!And the s
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oxes" hardware devices to make ille
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showed up on the ninth floor to wor
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Gosper's forte, and he did some ear
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the companionship of fellow hackers
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master key was a magic sword to wav
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sanctified objects, things you nurt
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6Winners and LosersBY 1966, when Da
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instead of sailing past the end of
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like a pair of antlers. It looked,
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made the same stupid mistake. Only
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"Well, it has them, it's just that
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their PDP-6, and you had one loser
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on a data disk accessible by the co
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system, Greenblatt and the rest exe
Page 108 and 109: create useful concepts and tools to
Page 110 and 111: 7LIFETHEY would later call it a Gol
Page 112 and 113: seriously. These were the days of t
Page 114 and 115: Sometimes the hacker failure to be
Page 116 and 117: later: "It was sort of necessary fo
Page 118 and 119: explored in the Adventure world wer
Page 120 and 121: and weird patterns established in t
Page 122 and 123: etter program. Greenblatt howled in
Page 124 and 125: The world.As much as the hackers tr
Page 126 and 127: mainframe machine in the basement o
Page 128 and 129: He loved the idea of electronics. H
Page 130 and 131: But the war was just beginning. For
Page 132 and 133: month he rented a room. It was belo
Page 134 and 135: expose people, especially kids, to
Page 136 and 137: Harbor, about thirty miles south of
Page 138 and 139: liberal arts colleges. Nelson was a
Page 140 and 141: I like to think(it has to be!)of a
Page 142 and 143: 9Every Man a GodJ.N June 1974, Lee
Page 144 and 145: microprocessor.Lee Felsenstein, in
Page 146 and 147: if he wanted to get involved in bui
Page 148 and 149: elieve it an acronym for "Man In Th
Page 150 and 151: kinds of gratification that a human
Page 152 and 153: would come out of these systems was
Page 154 and 155: company to help out in the crunch,
Page 156 and 157: dreaming of things to put in it to
Page 160 and 161: Fred Moore had set up a table in th
Page 162 and 163: charted the musical scale and writt
Page 164 and 165: Bob Marsh understood that this was
Page 166 and 167: Homebrew reviewers would examine ca
Page 168 and 169: could run some real programs on the
Page 170 and 171: Moore explicitly identified the pur
Page 172 and 173: SLAC, he talked of video displays,
Page 174 and 175: of the concept at work. One person'
Page 176 and 177: themselves to the hacker pursuit of
Page 178 and 179: after the meeting, Solomon was tell
Page 180 and 181: eaders), you would have a way to wr
Page 182 and 183: held at Albuquerque a year after th
Page 184 and 185: you steal your software. Hardware m
Page 186 and 187: fun," he later explained. Knowing s
Page 188 and 189: But by then the possibility of maki
Page 190 and 191: The computer is more interesting th
Page 192 and 193: The convivial approach I suggest wo
Page 194 and 195: amok. Marsh would often interrupt L
Page 196 and 197: profile, its typewriter-style built
Page 198 and 199: to get on various time-sharing comp
Page 200 and 201: oards); a 30-chip TV display. Skill
Page 202 and 203: He turned to computer programming,
Page 204 and 205: that use one less chip than the las
Page 206 and 207: Years later, the people attending t
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favorable to the prices HP was payi
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computers. Now that hackers like Wo
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"Silicon Gulch," as he called it. O
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So the Apple people were prepared t
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proper stream and go with it until
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13SecretsTED Nelson's speech was no
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The former "Captain Crunch" was in
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consuming passion was the resurrect
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energies were divided between that,
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Osbome while he and the others were
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Part ThreeGame HackersThe Sierras:T
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faded blue T-shirt. He had driven u
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A more important relationship to Ke
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Ken had gotten a taste of this more
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nonetheless ... and then extemporan
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For most of her life Roberta Willia
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was hard to control the writing mec
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Ken and Roberta bought the first co
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porno books.An excursion to the loc
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player's little tank. Jewell sugges
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Margot and Al, in her words, "becam
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of its founders. You almost had to
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16The Third GenerationTHERE were st
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where you try to get a guy to the t
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screen; "user definable characters"
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dozens of new software companies th
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Ken had. already been marketing a P
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home and reprogrammed the graphics.
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If Ken Williams released a game tha
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law was in a case in which some pri
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virtual copy of Pac-Man!But the jud
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employees. People played a continuo
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peppermint schnapps which was On-Li
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a sort of rehabilitation project on
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At that time Warren was working at
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opportunity and he should take it.
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Ken Williams took the concerns of h
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was really easy to talk to. We talk
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Line community.Ken was hugely proud
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easily as John Harris had lent his
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The instant that John Harris ended
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and patterned after Billboard's rec
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This was quite a step from the earl
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tweaking a marketing plan here, deb
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A week before Dick arrived, Ken was
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whole company to come to the site o
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Line hackers gathered at places lik
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Guinness Book of World Records cham
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magazine show. NBC shot the requisi
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subsidized by some institution. The
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While still in high school, he land
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Ken basically wanted a fairly relia
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Apple bestseller. But when Lord Bri
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estseller. After flying the young a
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important Applefests. For one thing
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This message managed to find its wa
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They noticed right away because Fro
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that the action was switching to tr
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20Wizard vs. WizardsIN December of
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things look good on television. Tat
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now I just spend my time skiing the
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The author of the twelfth bestselli
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even the furniture, upside down wer
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things to Ken about On-Line that he
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The company's energy became focused
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The techniques, algorithms, and cro
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e more precarious than it had first
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hacker paradise, the Tech Square mo
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around the country all because the
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could easily handle the considerabl
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minimum.Noftsker considered this un
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in with the bad guys here. But I'm
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with concern when he spoke of Stall
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Generation hacker. With many more g
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Afterword: Ten Years After"I think
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to avoid attending future Hacker Co
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(though not gender specific) called
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Joseph We-izenbaum, Randy Wigginton
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* Gosper's memo is part of "Hakmem,
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Delta, 1979).* "The winning isn't a
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