Microcomputers in Vans and Garages
Gordon French? I worked with him on a project in 1969. I think he did some of the programming for the project but I remember him most for his comforting human presence. His name came up in Forbes Greatest Technology Stories as the owner of the Menlo Park garage where the Homebrew Computer Club met in 1975.
In 1969 we were programming a satellite tracking system in a van for the Defense Department, using microcomputers built by Hewlett-Packard. We flipped switches, watched lights blink, and punched paper tape on a teletype machine. The geekiest kid wrote us an assembler on the IBM 1401 in the next room so we could type 3-letter commands instead of numeric instructions. The result was a 4-machine rack of master and three slaves that processed real-time data in the field.
Gordon was into model railroads then. He would talk about how he enjoyed playing with his trains more than he would talk about how he did this or that. It made a change from the highly focused work of squeezing a lot of programming into a small processor. When I read about his garage in 1975, I was sure it was the same Gordon French. His facilitating personality would surely attract geeky hobbyists.
The Homebrew Computer Club is basically where the personal computer was born. I'm a little confused about the Altaire 3300 that sat enthroned in Gordon's garage because the HPs we worked on 6 years before worked just fine. I guess the difference is the hobbyists who pooled their talents and started their own little companies. Some made the Big Time like Apple and Microsoft while many merely contributed to the the overall effort.
Nowadays, Open Source is the overall effort for hobbyists. Many talented Netizens contribute to nurturing a revolution in the software business. I wonder where Gordon is now?
In 1969 we were programming a satellite tracking system in a van for the Defense Department, using microcomputers built by Hewlett-Packard. We flipped switches, watched lights blink, and punched paper tape on a teletype machine. The geekiest kid wrote us an assembler on the IBM 1401 in the next room so we could type 3-letter commands instead of numeric instructions. The result was a 4-machine rack of master and three slaves that processed real-time data in the field.
Gordon was into model railroads then. He would talk about how he enjoyed playing with his trains more than he would talk about how he did this or that. It made a change from the highly focused work of squeezing a lot of programming into a small processor. When I read about his garage in 1975, I was sure it was the same Gordon French. His facilitating personality would surely attract geeky hobbyists.
The Homebrew Computer Club is basically where the personal computer was born. I'm a little confused about the Altaire 3300 that sat enthroned in Gordon's garage because the HPs we worked on 6 years before worked just fine. I guess the difference is the hobbyists who pooled their talents and started their own little companies. Some made the Big Time like Apple and Microsoft while many merely contributed to the the overall effort.
Nowadays, Open Source is the overall effort for hobbyists. Many talented Netizens contribute to nurturing a revolution in the software business. I wonder where Gordon is now?
posted by wonderbunny at
9:41 AM
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