Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

held at Albuquerque a year after the machines were introduced, when the strongwilledMITS president refused to rent display booths to competitors, and,according to some, raged with fury when he heard that companies like BobMarsh's Processor Technology had rented suites at the convention hotel and wereentertaining prospective customers.So when the MITS Caravan came to the Rickeys Hyatt House in Palo Alto in Juneof 1975, the stage was set for what some would call a crime and others would callliberation. The "Caravan" was a MITS marketing innovation. Some of the MITSengineers would travel in a motor home, dubbed the MITS-mobile, from city tocity, setting up Altairs in motel seminar rooms and inviting people to see theamazing low-cost computers at work. The turnout would largely be people whoordered Altairs and had questions on when they could expect delivery. People whoowned them would want to know where they went wrong in assembling themonster. People who owned MITS memory boards would want to know why theydidn't work. And people who'd ordered Altair BASIC would complain that theyhadn't gotten it.The Homebrew Computer Club crowd was out in force when the Caravan met atthe Rickeys Hyatt on El Camino Real in Palo Alto in early June, and were amazedwhen they found that the Altair on display was running BASIC. It was connectedto a teletype which had a paper-tape reader, and once it was loaded anyone couldtype in commands and get responses instantly. It looked like a godsend to thosehackers who had already sent in several hundred dollars to MITS and wereimpatiently waiting for BASIC. There is nothing more frustrating to a hacker thanto see an extension to a system and not be able to keep hands-on. The thought ofgoing home to an Altair without the capability of that machine running in thepseudo-plush confines of the Rickeys Hyatt must have been like a prison sentenceto those hackers. But hands-on prevailed. Years later, Steve Dompier tactfullydescribed what happened next: "Somebody, I don't think anyone figured out who,borrowed one of their paper tapes lying on the floor." The paper tape in questionheld the current version of Altair BASIC written by Bill Gates and Paul Alien.Dan Sokol later recalled that vague "someone" coming up to him and, noting thatSokol worked for one of the semiconductor firms, asking if he had any way ofduplicating paper tapes. Sokol said yes, there was a tape-copying machineavailable to him. He was handed the tape.Sokol had all sorts of reasons for accepting the assignment to copy the tapes. Hefelt that MITS' price for the BASIC was excessive. He thought that MITS wasgreedy. He had heard a rumor that Gates and Alien had written the interpreter on abig computer system belonging to an institution funded in part by the government,and therefore felt the program belonged to all taxpayers. He knew that many