Chapter
4
Homebrew
Are you building your own computer? Terminal? TV Typewriter? I/O device? Or some other digital black box? Or are you buying time on a time-sharing service? If so, you might like to come to a gathering of people with like-minded interests. Exchange information, swap ideas, talk shop, help work on a project.…
Why did the Altair and IMSAI computers generate such excitement among engineers and electronics enthusiasts? Not because they were technological breakthroughs—they weren’t. To understand the wild enthusiasm that greeted these computers, you have to get inside the minds of the people who bought them—and who would soon found their own computer companies. And you have to remember the social and political milieu of the time. Although the Altair was released in 1975, it was largely a product of the cultural revolution of the 1960s.