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Meanwhile, Texas Instruments (TI) had picked up the CTC contract and delivered a microprocessor. TI was pursuing the microprocessor market as aggressively as Intel; Gary Boone of TI had, in fact, just filed a patent applica-tion for something called a single-chip computer. Three different microproces-sors now existed. But Intel’s marketing department had been right about the amount of customer support the microprocessors demanded. For instance, users needed documentation on the operations the chips performed, the language they recognized, the voltage they used, the amount of heat they dissipated, and a host of other things. Someone had to write these information manuals. At Intel the job was given to an engineer named Adam Osborne, who would later play a very different part in making computers personal.

The microprocessor software formed another kind of essential customer support. A disadvantage with a general-purpose computer or processor is that it does nothing without programs. The chips, as general-purpose proces-sors, needed programs, the instructions that would tell them what to do. To create these programs, Intel first assembled an entire computer around each of its two microprocessor chips. These computers were not commercial products but instead were development systems—tools to help write programs for the processor. They were also, although no one used this term at the time, microcomputers.

One of the first people to begin developing these programs was a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School located down the coast from Silicon Valley, in Pacific Grove, California. Like Osborne, Gary Kildall would be an important figure in the development of the personal computer.

Critical Mass

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Gary Kildall: Kildall wrote the first programming language for Intel’s 4004 microprocessor, as well as a control program that he would later turn into the personal-computer industry’s most

popular operating system. (Courtesy of Tom G. O’Neal)

In late 1972, Kildall already had written a simple language for the 4004—a program that translated cryptic commands into the more cryptic ones and zeroes that formed the internal instruction set of the microprocessor. Although written for the 4004, the program actually ran on a large IBM 360 computer.

With this program, one could type commands on an IBM keyboard and gen-erate a file of 4004 instructions that could then be sent to a 4004 if a 4004 were somehow connected to the IBM machine.

Connecting the 4004 to anything at all was hardly a trivial task. The micro-processor had to be plugged into a specially designed circuit board that was equipped with connections to other chips and to devices such as a Teletype machine. The Intel development systems had been created for just this type of problem solving. Naturally, Kildall was drawn to the microcomputer lab at Intel, where the development systems were housed.

Eventually, Kildall contracted with Intel to implement a language for the chip manufacturer. PL/M (Programming Language for Microcomputers) would be a so-called high-level language, in contrast to the low-level machine language

that was made up of the instruction set of the microprocessor. With PL/M, one could write a program once and have it run on a 4004 processor, an 8008, or on future processors Intel might produce. This would speed up the programming process.

But writing the language was no simple task. To understand why, you have to think about how computer languages operate.

A computer language is a set of commands a computer can recognize. The computer only responds to that fixed set of commands incorporated into its circuitry or etched into its chips. Implementing a language requires creating a program that will translate the sorts of commands a user can understand into commands the machine can use.

The microprocessors not only were physically tiny, but also had a limited logic to work with. They got by with a minimum amount of smarts, and therefore were beastly hard to program. It was difficult to design any language for them, let alone a high-level language like PL/M. A friend and coworker of Kildall’s later explained the choice, saying that Gary Kildall wrote PL/M largely because it was a difficult task. Like many important programmers and designers before him and since, Kildall was in it primarily for the intellectual challenge.

But the most significant piece of software Kildall developed at that time was much simpler in its design.

CP/M

Intel’s early microcomputers used paper tape to store information. Therefore, programs had to enable a computer to control the paper-tape reader or paper punch automatically, accept the data electronically as the information streamed in from the tape, store and locate the data in memory, and feed the data out to the paper-tape punch. The computer also had to be able to manipulate data in memory and keep track of which spots were available for data storage and which were in use at any given moment. A lot of bookkeeping.

Programmers don’t want to have to think about such picayune details every time they write a program. Large computers automatically take care of these tasks through the use of a program called an operating system. For program-mers writing in a mainframe language, the operating system is a given; it’s a part of the way the machine works and an integral feature of the computing environment.

But Kildall was working with a primordial setup. No operating system. Like a carpenter building his own scaffolding, Kildall wrote the elements of an Critical Mass

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operating system for the Intel machines. This rudimentary operating system had to be very efficient and compact in order to operate on a microprocessor, and it happened that Kildall had the skills and the motivation to make it so.

Eventually, that microprocessor operating system evolved into something Kildall called CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers). When Kildall asked the Intel executives if they had any objections to his marketing CP/M on his own, they simply shrugged and said to go ahead. They had no plans to sell it themselves.

CP/M made Kildall a fortune and helped to launch an industry.

Intel was in uncharted waters. By building microprocessors, the company had already ventured beyond its charter of building memory chips. Although the company was not about to retreat from that enterprise, there was solid resistance to moving even farther afield. It was true that there’d been talk about designing machines around microprocessors, and even about using a microprocessor as the main component in a small computer. But micropro-cessor-controlled computers seemed to have marginal sales potential at best.

Wristwatches.

That was where microprocessors would find their chief market, Noyce thought.

The Intel executives discussed other possible applications. Microprocessor-controlled ovens. Stereos. Automobiles. But it would be up to the customers to build the ovens, stereos, and cars; Intel would only sell the chips. There was a virtual mandate at Intel against making products that could be seen as competing against its own customers.

It made perfect sense. Intel was an exciting place to work in 1972. To Intel’s executives it felt like Intel was at the center of all things innovative, and that the microprocessor industry was going to change the world. It seemed obvious to Kildall, to Mike Markkula (the marketing manager for memory chips), and to others that the innovative designers of microprocessors should be working at the semiconductor companies. They decided to stick to putting logic on slivers of silicon and to leave the building (and programming) of computers and such devices to the mainframe and minicomputer companies.

But when the minicomputer companies didn’t take up the challenge, Markkula, Kildall, and Osborne each thought better of their decision to stick to the chip business. Within the following decade, each of them would create a multimillion-dollar personal computer or personal-computer-software company of his own.

Breakout

We [Digital Equipment Corporation] could have come out with a personal computer in January 1975. If we had taken that prototype, most of which was proven stuff, the PDP-8 A could have been developed and put in production in that seven- or eight-month period.

–David Ahl, former DEC employee and founder of pioneer computer magazine Creative Computing

By 1970, there existed two distinct kinds of computers and two kinds of companies selling them.

The room-sized mainframe computers were built by IBM, CDC, Honeywell, and the other dwarfs. These machines were designed by an entire generation of engineers, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and were often custom-built one at a time.

Then you had the minicomputers built by such companies as DEC and Hewlett-Packard. Relatively cheap and compact, these machines were built in larger quantities than the mainframes and sold primarily to scientific lab-oratories and businesses. The typical minicomputer cost one-tenth as much as a mainframe and took up no more space than a bookshelf.

Minicomputers incorporated semiconductor devices, which reduced the size of the machines. The mainframes also used semiconductor components, but they generally used them to create even more powerful machines that were no smaller in size. Semiconductor tools such as the Intel 4004 were beginning to be used to control peripheral devices, including printers and tape drives, but it was obvious to everyone concerned that the chips could also be used to shrink the computer and make it cheaper. The mainframe computer and minicomputer companies had the money, expertise, and unequaled opportu-nity to place computers in the hands of nearly everyone. It didn’t take a visionary to see a personal-sized computer that could fit on a desktop or in a briefcase or in a shirt pocket at the end of the path toward increased miniaturization. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the major players among mainframe and minicomputer companies seemed the most logical candidates for producing a personal computer.

It was obvious that computer development was headed in that direction. Ever since the 1930s when Benjamin Burack was developing his “logic machine,”

people had been building desktop- and briefcase-sized machines that per-formed computerlike functions. Computer-company engineers and designers at semiconductor companies foresaw a continuing trend of components becoming increasingly cheap, fast, and small year after year. The indicators Breakout

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pointed undoubtedly to the development of a small personal computer by, most likely, a minicomputer company.

It was only logical, but it didn’t happen that way. Every one of the existing computer companies passed up the chance to bring computers into the home and to every work desk. The next generation of computers, the microcomputer, was created entirely by individual entrepreneurs working outside the estab-lished corporations.

It wasn’t that the idea of a personal computer had never occurred to the decision makers at the major computer companies. Eager engineers at some of those firms offered detailed proposals for building microcomputers and even working prototypes, but the proposals were rejected and the prototypes shelved. In some cases, work actually commenced on personal-computer projects, but eventually they, too, were allowed to wither and die.

The mainframe companies apparently thought that no market existed for low-cost personal computers, and even if there were such a market, they figured it was the minicomputer companies who would exploit it. They were wrong.

Take Hewlett-Packard, a company that grew up in Silicon Valley and was producing everything from mainframe computers to pocket calculators. Senior engineers at HP studied and eventually spurned a design offered by one of their employees, an engineer without a degree named Stephen Wozniak. In rejecting his design, the HP engineers acknowledged that Wozniak’s computer worked and could be built cheaply, but they told him it was not a product for HP. Wozniak eventually gave up on his employers and built his computers out of a garage in a start-up enterprise called Apple.

Likewise, Robert (Bob) Albrecht, who worked for CDC in Minneapolis during the early 1960s, quit in frustration over the company’s unwillingness to even consider looking into the personal-computer market. After leaving CDC, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and established himself as a sort of computer guru. Albrecht was interested in exploring ways computers could be used as educational aids. He produced what could be called the first publication on personal computing and spread information on how individuals could learn about and use computers.

DEC

The prime example of an established computer company that failed to explore the new technology was Digital Equipment Corporation. With annual sales close to a billion dollars by 1974, DEC was the first and the largest of the minicomputer companies. DEC made some of the most compact computers

available at the time. The PDP-8, which had inspired Ted Hoff to design the 4004, was the closest thing to a personal computer one could find. One version of the PDP-8 was so small that sales reps routinely carried it in the trunks of their cars and set it up at the customer’s site. In that sense, it was one of the first portable computers. DEC could have been the company that created the personal computer. The story of its failure to seize that opportunity gives some indication of the mentality in computer companies’ boardrooms during the early 1970s.

For David Ahl, the story began when he was hired as a DEC marketing con-sultant in 1969. By that time, he had picked up degrees in electrical engineer-ing and business administration and was finishengineer-ing up his PhD in educational psychology. Ahl came to DEC to develop its educational product line, the first product line at DEC to be defined in terms of its potential users rather than its hardware.

David Ahl: Ahl left Digital Equipment Corporation in 1974 to start Creative Computing mag-azine and popularize personal computers. (Courtesy of David H. Ahl)

Four years later, responding to the recession of 1973, DEC cut back on edu-cational-product development. When Ahl protested the cuts, he was fired.

Rehired into a division of the company dedicated to developing new hardware, he soon became entirely caught up in building a computer that was smaller than any yet built. Ahl’s group didn’t know what to call the machine, but if it had taken off it certainly would have qualified as a personal computer.

Breakout

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Basic Computer Games: David Ahl’s book Basic Computer Games was translated into eight languages and sold more than a million copies, playing an important role in popularizing

per-sonal computers in the late 1970s. (Courtesy of David H. Ahl)

Ahl’s interests had grown somewhat incompatible with the DEC mindset.

DEC viewed computers as an industrial product. “Like pig iron. DEC was interested in pushing out iron,” Ahl later recalled. When he was working in DEC’s educational division, Ahl wrote a newsletter that regularly published instructions for playing computer games. Ahl talked the company into pub-lishing a book he had put together, Basic Computer Games. He was beginning to view the computer as an individual educational tool, and games seemed a natural part of that.

DEC wasn’t set up to sell computers to individuals, but Ahl had learned something about the potential market for personal computers while working in DEC’s educational-products division. The division would occasionally receive requests from doctors or engineers or other professionals who wanted

a computer to manage their practices. Some of DEC’s machines were actually cheap enough to sell to professionals, but the company wasn’t prepared to handle such requests. A big difference existed between selling to individuals and selling to an organization that could hire engineers and programmers to maintain a computer system and could afford to buy technical support from DEC. The company was not ready to handle customer support for individuals.

The team Ahl was working with intended that this new product bring comput-ers into new markets such as schools. Although its price tag would keep it out of the reach of most households, Ahl saw schools as the wedge to get the machines into the hands of individuals, specifically schoolkids. The machines could be sold in large quantities to schools, to be used individually by stu-dents. Ahl figured that Heath, a company specializing in electronics hobby equipment, would be willing to build a kit version of the DEC minicomputer, which would lower the price even more.

The new computer was built into a DEC terminal, inside of which circuit boards thick with semiconductor devices were jammed around the base of the tube. The designers had packed every square inch of the terminal case with electronics. The computer was no larger than a television set, although heavier. Ahl had not designed the device, but he felt as protective of it as if it were his own child. He presented his plan for marketing personal computers at a meeting of DEC’s operations committee.

Kenneth Olsen, the president of the company and regarded throughout the industry as one of its wisest executives, was there along with some vice presidents and a few outside investors. As Ahl later recalled, the board was polite but not enthusiastic about the project, although the engineers seemed interested. After some tense moments, Olsen said that he could see no reason why anyone would want a home computer. Ahl’s heart sank. Although the board had not actually rejected the plan, he knew that without Olsen’s support it would fail.

Ahl was now utterly frustrated. He had been getting calls from executive search firms offering him jobs, and told himself the next time a headhunter called he would accept the offer. Ahl, like Wozniak and Albrecht and many others, had walked out the door and into a revolution.

Hackers

I swore off computers for about a year and a half—the end of the ninth grade and all of the tenth. I tried to be normal, the best I could.

–Bill Gates, cofounder of Microsoft Corporation

Hackers

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Had the personal-computer revolution waited for action from the mainframe-computer and minimainframe-computer companies, the PC might still be a thing of the future. But there were those who would not wait patiently for something to happen, and their very impatience led them to take steps toward creating a revolution of their own. Some of those revolutionaries were incredibly young.

In the late 1960s, before David Ahl lost all patience with DEC, Paul Allen and his school friends at Seattle’s private Lakeside School were working at a company called Computer Center Corporation (or “C Cubed” to Allen and his friends). The boys volunteered their time to help find bugs in the work of DEC system programmers. They learned fast and were getting a little cocky. Soon they were adding touches of their own to make the programs run faster. Bill Gates wasn’t shy about criticizing certain DEC programmers, and pointed out those who repeatedly made the same mistakes.

Hacking

Perhaps Gates got too cocky. Certainly the sense of power he got from control-ling those giant computers exhilarated him. One day he began experimenting with the computer security systems. On time-sharing computer systems, such as the DEC TOPS-10 system that Gates knew well, many users shared

Perhaps Gates got too cocky. Certainly the sense of power he got from control-ling those giant computers exhilarated him. One day he began experimenting with the computer security systems. On time-sharing computer systems, such as the DEC TOPS-10 system that Gates knew well, many users shared