Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

Bob Marsh understood that this was the beginning of a new era, and a terrificopportunity. Sitting on the cold floor in Gordon French's garage, he decided thathe would design and build some circuit boards that would plug into one of theblank slots on the Altair bus.Bob Marsh wasn't the only one with that idea. In fact, right there in Palo Alto (thetown next to Memo Park, where the meet ing was being held), two Stanfordprofessors named Harry Garland and Roger Melen were already working on addonboards to the Altair. They hadn't heard about the meeting, but would come tothe second meeting of hardware enthusiasts, and be regulars thereafter.The two Ph.D.s had first heard about the Altair when Melen, a tall, heavy manwhose wittiness was only slightly impeded by a recurrent stutter, was visiting LesSolomon in late 1974 at the New York office of Popular Electronics. Melen andGarland had done articles outlining hobbyist projects for the magazine in theirspare time, and were just putting to bed an article telling how to build a TVcameracontrol device.Melen noticed a strange box on Solomon's desk and asked what it was. Solomoninformed him that the box, the prototype Altair that Ed Roberts had sent to replacethe one lost in air freight, was an 8080 microcomputer that sold for under fourhundred dollars. Roger Melen did not think that such a thing was possible, and LesSolomon told him that if he doubted it, he should call Ed Roberts in Albuquerque.Melen did this without hesitation, and arranged to make a stopover on his wayback West. He wanted to buy two of those computers. Also, Ed Roberts hadpreviously licensed a project that Melen and Garland had written about in PopularElectronics, and had never gotten around to paying them royalties. So there weretwo things that Melen wanted to talk to Roberts about.The Altair computer was the more important by far the right toy at the right time,Melen thought and he was so excited about the prospect of owning one that hecouldn't sleep that night. When he finally got to MITS' modest headquarters, hewas disappointed to find that there was no Altair ready to take home. But EdRoberts was a fascinating fellow, a dyed-in-the-wool engineer with a blazingvision. They talked until five in the morning about the technical aspects of thisvision. This was before the Popular Electronics article was out, though, andRoberts was concerned at what the response might be. He figured it would not hurtto have some people manufacturing boards to put into the Altair to make it useful,and he agreed to send Melen and Garland an early prototype, so they could makesomething to connect a TV camera to the machine, and then a board to output avideo image as well.