Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

Intel 4004 chip, and for a time maintained the Homebrew mailing list on it. Hetook a perverse pleasure in evoking astonishment from people when he told themwhat he had done with the system, making it perform tasks far beyond itstheoretical limits.Pittman had dreamed of having his own computer since his high school days in theearly sixties. All his life he had been a self-described "doer, not a watcher," but heworked alone, in a private world dominated by the reassuring logic of electronics."I'm not very sensitive to other people's thought patterns," he said later. He wouldgo to the library to take out books on the subject, go through them, then take outmore. "I couldn't read long before I'd set the book down and do things in my headif nowhere else."By the time he had arrived at Berkeley, he had already taken college-level courseson all sorts of math and engineering subjects. His favorite course during hisfreshman year was Numerical Analysis. While the Free Speech Movement wasraging around him, Pittman was blithely tangling with the problems in the labsection of the course, systematically wrestling each mathematical conundrum tothe ground till it howled for mercy. But he was bored by the lecture part of thecourse; it didn't seem "interesting," and his mark in Numerical Analysis was splitbetween an A in lab and an F in lecture. He had identical results upon repeatingthe course. Perhaps he was not destined to fit into the organized structure of auniversity.Then he found his escape. A sympathetic professor helped him get a job at aDepartment of Defense laboratory in San Francisco. He worked on computersthere, helping on game simulations that gauged the radiation effect fromhypothetical nuclear explosions. He had no ethical problem with the job. "Beingbasically insensitive to political issues, I never even noticed," he later said. Hisbeliefs as a devout Christian led him to declare himself a "semi-objector." He laterexplained: "It means I was willing [to serve] but not willing to shoot people. Iworked there at the laboratory to serve my country. I had a lot of fun."He welcomed the chance to finally become addicted to computers; though hiswork hours officially ended at six, he would often work much later, enjoying thepeace of being the only one there. He would work until he was too tired to go on;one night driving home to the East Bay he fell asleep and woke up in a rosebushon the side of the road. He learned the computer system at the lab so well that hebecame the unofficial systems hacker; whenever people had a problem with themachine they came to Tom. He was crushed when, after the war ended anddefense funds withered, the lab closed.