| Many consider the Homebrew Computer Club the granddaddy of both the modern IT (information technology) industry and hacking. The club met for the first time in 1975 in Gordon French’s garage in Menlo Park. French was an engineer who had
homebrewed, or built himself, a computer centered on the Intel 8008 chip. He and Fred Moore, who had been members of a computer club called the People’s Computer Company, decided to form a club of their own. It would be for people interested in the emerging technology
and could talk about computers, share their techniques, and look at demonstrations of the latest technology. The PC wasn’t around in those days, and hobbyists mainly used computers.
The attendees of the Homebrew Computer Club were hackers, as nearly any computer enthusiast had to be in those days. The term hacker also had different connotations in those days too, as many people would argue it does now. By definition, a hacker
is someone who “hacks” through a computer problem by writing his own code to fix it. A hacker usually does this using a low-level language, such as assembly or FORTRAN (formula translator), which are basic ways of commanding a computer. Only recently, because
malicious criminals have launched damaging assaults on computer systems, has the term taken on negative connotations. These individuals might more accurately be called crackers,
a combination of the words criminal and hacker.
The people involved in the Homebrew Computer club wanted to build their own machines, and they did so by cobbling together existing parts, including the Altair computer kit, computer chips, such as the Intel 8080, or any other electronic hardware equipment.
Their club became the precursor of a new industry different from any other.
The Homebrew Computer Club was so successful that within a year the meetings had moved to a hall rented from Stanford University in Silicon Valley. Lee Felsenstein eventually headed the meetings. Former member Steve Wozniak told The
Guardian newspaper of his early attendance, “People talked about ongoing rumors, traded parts, and demonstrated projects and products. Part of the excitement was in knowing we could see a future revolution based on low-cost computers.”
Wozniak, along with Steve Jobs, helped spark that revolution by founding Apple Computers. Wozniak had been an employee of Hewlett-Packard, and Jobs of Atari when they started attending the club and decided to build a machine together. Other pioneers of computing
came from the Homebrew, including Bob Marsh and Adam Osborne. |
