Re: Resurrecting the Apple I

[et472@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Michael Black)]

"Bryan Villados" (news002@macgeek.org) writes:
>[stuff deleted]
> 
> Yeah, those other devices you mentioned (MOS KIMs and Rockwell AIMs) could
> also be up there with the Apple 1. However, can you find a handful of people
> that can tell you off the top of their heads the names of the people who
> made these devices? And, what kind of people these engineers were? I know
> that Lee Felsenstein invented the Osborne 1, but what kind of a person was
> he? From what I can gather, he was pretty much a featureless bore and a
> total nerd, so that may not have helped the Osborne 1's legacy. But then if
> you take the same personality and put it in another body, name the body Bill
> Gates, and then crank up the art of gab feature 3 notches, then you'll
> understand that it is Bill that makes the MITS Altair's legacy and not just
> the machine itself. Remember that the inventor of the box is now practicing
> general medicine, so he didn't help the Altair's legacy any.
> 
Lee Felsenstein is far more interesting in his life outside computers
than the other big names from the early days in their lives outside
computers.

Lee wrote a column for the Berkley Barb in the late sixties, rating
demonstrations (not on what they were about but on attendance and 
creativity).  He helped out with the Community Memory project (a mainframe
hooked up to public terminals) in 1974.  The company formed to do that
was called "Loving Grace Cybernetics", after a poem by Richard Brautigan.
(In 1967 at an event in San Francisco, Richard Brautigan and Claude Hayward
used the infamous ComCo Gestetner machine to issue bulletins.  Peter
Coyote in his book "Sleeping Where I Fall" refers to this:
'Richard Brautigan and Claude Hayward established a printing press
in one room and Richard wandered the floors, observing the madness
and then rushed back to print and distribute special handbills
commenting on and alerting others to what he had observed, linking
the participants in a prototypical World Wide Web'.)  I suspect
Community Memory was influenced by that earlier event.

Lee Felsenstein created an early hobby modem, the Pennywhistle,
co-designed the Processor Technology Sol and I did some other work
for PT, and probably was involved in some other work that escapes
me at the moment.

Steve Wozniak's vision was because the technology was cool.  Lee
Felsenstein obviously felt the same way, but he also saw small
computers as a revolutionary thing.  Home computers were driven
by the gadget factor in the early days, but it is fascinating how
many of the early participants had roots in the counter-culture.

As for the Altair 8800, it made it's own legacy.  While there
a handful of small computer kits before the Altair was on the
January 1975 cover of Popular Electronics, the Altair was far
more visible, and it's introduction really got things going,
launching other companies to build add-ons or competing computers,
and Byte.  It's remembered because it had big impact.  If Bill
Gates is remembered in connection with it, it's as some kid who
had BASIC for it early on, and wrote a letter to the hobby magazines
complaining of people copying the software.

   Michael