Difference between revisions of "Lee Felsenstein"
From Convivial Tools Database
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Lee Felsenstein is an electrical engineer who played a key role among the hardware hackers who invented the personal computer. Felsenstein's approach to hardware development was significantly influenced by [[Ivan Illich]]'s vision of [[Convivial Tools]] that would be maintained and developed by a community of users. | Lee Felsenstein is an electrical engineer who played a key role among the hardware hackers who invented the personal computer. Felsenstein's approach to hardware development was significantly influenced by [[Ivan Illich]]'s vision of [[Convivial Tools]] that would be maintained and developed by a community of users. | ||
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==Resource One== | ==Resource One== | ||
| − | In 1971 | + | In 1971 Lee Felsenstein came into contact with a group of four computer science students who had dropped out of Berkeley and were living in a warehouse community in San Francisco. They obtained the donation of an obsolete time-sharing computer, an XDS 940, and set up the non-profit organisation Resource One to try to deliver computing power to non-profit organisations and social-action groups. |
Lee Felsenstein signed on as chief engineer. The computer was delivered in 1972 in two trucks, and it also required 23 tons of air conditioning. The hardware was old and Felsenstein had numerous problems trying to keep it running. A friend of Felsenstein’s, a systems programmer named Efrem Lipkin, directed the project of writing an information retrieval system, which took more than a year to write and debug. | Lee Felsenstein signed on as chief engineer. The computer was delivered in 1972 in two trucks, and it also required 23 tons of air conditioning. The hardware was old and Felsenstein had numerous problems trying to keep it running. A friend of Felsenstein’s, a systems programmer named Efrem Lipkin, directed the project of writing an information retrieval system, which took more than a year to write and debug. | ||
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In January 1975 appeared the issue of Popular Electronics magazine advertising a kit for hobbyists to build the MITS Altair 8800, now considered to be first microcomputer. The Altair catalyzed the formation of the [[Homebrew Computer Club]], an informal group of computer enthusiasts who met to discuss the construction of personal computing devices, and from whose ranks came many of the designers of early microcomputers and founders of microcomputer companies. | In January 1975 appeared the issue of Popular Electronics magazine advertising a kit for hobbyists to build the MITS Altair 8800, now considered to be first microcomputer. The Altair catalyzed the formation of the [[Homebrew Computer Club]], an informal group of computer enthusiasts who met to discuss the construction of personal computing devices, and from whose ranks came many of the designers of early microcomputers and founders of microcomputer companies. | ||
| − | Ever since Resource One days, on Wednesday nights Felsenstein had been going down to potluck dinners at the People’s Computer Center in Menlo Park, run by Bob Albrecht, who also ran the [[ | + | Ever since Resource One days, on Wednesday nights Felsenstein had been going down to potluck dinners at the People’s Computer Center in Menlo Park, run by Bob Albrecht, who also ran the [[People's Computer Company]] newsletter. When the Altair was announced, a call for a meeting went out all those who were on the PCC visitor list. Felsenstein took to the meeting a version of the Altair that had been sent to People’s Computer Company as a review copy. They had given it to Felsenstein, who had assembled it and taken it to show Efrem Lipkin, who considered it useless, since there was nothing to it but switches and lights. Lipkin kept it as a sculpture in his living room, on the same table with his guinea-pig cage, with its lights flashing to keep the guinea pigs company. Felsenstein retrieved it and returned it to PCC, and it turned up as the centerpiece of the first [[Homebrew Computer Club]] meeting. |
At the first meeting thirty people stood around the Altair and discussed what they knew about it and told about their own ongoing projects. They began to understand that as a group they probably knew as much as the MITS people. During the following weeks the members dissected the Altair, and began planning their own projects, which included building memory boards for the Altair, peripherals, a better bus, and even competing computers. After the Homebrew Computer Club had been operating for sometime [[Lee Felsenstein]] became the facilitor for the Club, an informal master of ceremonies directing the meetings and discussions. As many as 750 attended the meetings and they became a major locus of information exchange on computers in the Bay Area. | At the first meeting thirty people stood around the Altair and discussed what they knew about it and told about their own ongoing projects. They began to understand that as a group they probably knew as much as the MITS people. During the following weeks the members dissected the Altair, and began planning their own projects, which included building memory boards for the Altair, peripherals, a better bus, and even competing computers. After the Homebrew Computer Club had been operating for sometime [[Lee Felsenstein]] became the facilitor for the Club, an informal master of ceremonies directing the meetings and discussions. As many as 750 attended the meetings and they became a major locus of information exchange on computers in the Bay Area. | ||
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*Felsenstein interview in the newsletter of the Computer History Association of California (1995): http://opencollector.org/history/homebrew/engv3n1.html | *Felsenstein interview in the newsletter of the Computer History Association of California (1995): http://opencollector.org/history/homebrew/engv3n1.html | ||
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[[Category:Hacker Generation]] | [[Category:Hacker Generation]] | ||
