In March 1975, thirty-two computer enthusiasts met in Gordon French’s garage around an Altair 8800 computer. No one had seen anything like it, and they shared whatever information they had. Steve Dompier had actually been to MITS in Albuquerque to pick up an Altair, and he described an overworked staff trying to catch up with a flood of orders. They had already shipped 1500 machines and were working hard to get the next 1100 out the door. What’s more, the company would deliver none of the much-needed accessories until they filled the outstanding orders for the basic machine. This news was about all Dompier had to show for his trip: he ended up leaving Albuquerque without significant chunks of the Altair kit he had bought and paid for.
The Altair actually on display at the meeting had been sent to the editorial department of Bob Albrecht’s People’s Computer Company for review, and he showed it off to the club. It was a marvel, the first small, affordable computer that could actually do something, and there it was in Gordon French’s garage, blinking, maybe even computing—though the only real evidence of that was the blinking, since the machine had no screen or keyboard.
The group agreed to continue meeting and called themselves the Homebrew Computer Club. Over the next weeks they dissected the Altair. Everything about it, good and bad, inspired and excited them, and they would go away into the night planning their own projects—memory boards for the Altair, peripherals, a better bus, even competing computers.
Steve Dompier finally got the remainder of his kit, and he put it together in two sleepless days. Testing it he discovered that its unshielded circuits interfered with a nearby radio, turning everything into static. Interestingly, though, the static changed pitch as the Altair went through its test programs. Dompier stayed up another eight hours working out the musical scale and writing a demo program for Homebrew.
At the next meeting he toggled in the program (twice because someone tripped over the plug the first time) and tuned his radio between stations to get uninterrupted fuzz. At the final flick of a switch, the Altair began playing a wispy version of The Beatles’ “Fool on the Hill” in pure radio static. It was possibly the first program beyond test routines ever written for the Altair. As an encore, the machine then went into a short rendition of “Daisy Bell,” an homage to a pioneering piece of computer music performed at Bell Labs back in the ’50s.
The significance of “Daisy” was obvious, and the room went wild. The Homebrew Computer Club was staking its claim to a world that once belonged only to university labs, corporations, and government agencies. After that night, the power of computing would be open to all. ___
Altair plays “The Fool on the Hill”
Homebrew Computer Club