Popular Electronics put a computer on its January 1975 cover that was, in fact, an empty box; the real one had been lost in transit. Thousands of people sent Ed Roberts a cheque anyway. In a Menlo Park garage a pacifist named Fred Moore called a meeting for them, and thirty-two turned up in the rain. Lee Felsenstein ran the club with a wooden pointer. Steve Wozniak brought a board he meant to give away, and the friend he drove up with noticed it could be sold.
This chapter has not been serialised yet. It will appear on Substack first, and this page will carry its opening when it does.
- In this chapter
- Ed Roberts, Les Solomon, Fred Moore, Gordon French, Lee Felsenstein, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Ron Wayne, Paul Terrell
- The idea it builds
- A computer programmed by front-panel switches, then Wozniak's trick of letting the processor and the screen share the same memory chips.