Category Archives: 1975

Byte Magazine

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byte-num-1Byte was a hugely influential computer magazine that begain in 1975 and was published throughout the 1980s. It covered development in the entire field of software and computers, was published monthly, and sold for a yearly subscription of $10. The first issue was printed in September 1975, and featured ads from many companies that would become corporate giants in the near future. Early articles included do it yourself projects for your computer, and even software development for computer improvement. Significant articles were printed in the publication, including source code for Tiny C and BASIC, a first look at CP/M, and it also ran one of Microsoft’s first ads.

In 1979 Byte was sold to McGraw-Hill and moved away from the do it yourself theme of the early issues after the emergence of the IBM-PC to become one of the first computer magazines to do product reviews. By 1990 it had become an inch thick and boasted a yearly subscription price of $56, making it the must have computer periodical. The magazine launched a website in 1993, but then was bought by CMP Media and publication was ceased in July 1998 to the shock of readers and subscribers. The following year it was revived as a subscription web publication and has been thriving ever since.

When Byte was originally published by Wayne and Virginia Green, there was a fight over the magazine following a court case against their previous publishing company. Virginia Green retained control of the company however, and later Wayne paid damages after a few lawsuits for saying negative things about Byte.

Altair 8800

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altair8800The MITS Altair 8800 was built by Ed Roberts, who founded MITS in the early 1970s. Originally producing lights for electronic hobbyists, they were heavily in debt by 1974. Roberts had a new idea, a computer affordable for the average person, and managed to make a deal with Intel to buy their processors for $75 a piece. Intel saw no market in the microcomputer game, but sold the chips to Roberts anyway.

With chip in hand, Roberts and colleague Bob Yates set about designing a “microcomputer” around it. Naming it after an episode of Star Trek, it was called the Altair. Roberts arranged a story in Popular Electronics magazine about the project, and readers discovered the first personal computer on the cover in January 1975. Computer hobbyists flooded MITS with orders, and the flabbergasted company scrambled to satisfy the demand. And despite the fact you couldn’t really do anything with it, techies all over enjoyed having a real computer to tinker with at home.

The Altair came with no monitor, keyboard or disk drive and in fact had no way to input/output information. It’s significance is that it spawned the microcomputer revolution as others began writing software and creating hardware to work with it. Microsoft was formed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen after writing the operating software for the Altair, which was a form of BASIC.

In 1974, Railway Express Railroad Co. lost Roberts’ only prototype on a trip to New York for review and photos with Popular Electronics.

Lee Felsenstein

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felsensteinLee Felsenstein is an electronic design engineer who was a participant in the early development of personal computers. Two of his designs (the Sol-20 and the Osborne-1) are on display in the Smithsonian, as is the story of the Homebrew Computer Club, which he chaired and where open architecture was developed. Most recently, Lee was a senior researcher at Interval Research Corporation in Palo Alto, participating in long-range projects to re-invent the information infrastructure. Mr. Felsenstein lives in Palo Alto, CA. He holds several patents and in 1994 received a Pioneer of the Electronic Frontier Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Telnet

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programming2Telnet was and is the way of connecting to computers on the Internet. Before the World Wide Web made graphical access to the Internet possible, computers on the Internet understood only typed commands very much like DOS.

Telnet is designed to allow a user to log in to a foreign machine and execute commands there. Telnet works as though you are at the console of the remote machine, as if you physically approached the remote machine, tuned it on, and began working on it. Now that the World Wide Web has become the preferred way to access most resources, Telnet is seldom used, except for special applications, system administration, and to access archaic systems.