we just kept tuning and tuning that thing.
And - and so that kind of craftsmanship paid off.
BASIC let the Altair be used for both fun stuff and real work.
People attached terminals to the computer and began writing games,
word processors, and accounting programs.
Most of us didn't notice but soon there was thriving industry
for enthusiasts.
By the end of 1975, dozens of other companies
were building microcomputers.
We created an industry and I think that goes completely unnoticed.
I mean there was nothing - every aspect of the industry when you talk
about software, hardware, application stuff,
dealerships, you name it, it was all in a mess.
It was a wild time. It was a very exciting time.
and the first user convention - where we got people to come in and
tell us what they were doing, what they were excited about,
and other companies like Processor Technology or Imsai or Comemco
got going as add-on companies.
These companies are long-forgotten, but they were the -
the humble beginnings of the - of the PC industry.
Left in the hands of those early hobbyists the PC might never have
made it to the shopping mall.
Reaching the wider market required a different type of vision.
Enter the flower children of California, who thought the PC was,
well, groovy.
Remember that the Sixties happened in the early Seventies, right,
so you have to remember that and that's sort of when I came of age.
So I saw a lot of this and to me the spark of that
was that there was something beyond sort of what you see every day.
It's the same thing that causes people to want to be
poets instead of bankers.
And I think that's a wonderful thing. And I think that that same spirit
can be put into products,
and those products can be manufactured and given to people
and they can sense that spirit.
To help you understand all this, I will now take off my clothes.
- And he says well frame relay is scaleable.
Jim Warren knows better than most what the hippy movement
did for the PC.
A sixties radical himself, he staged the West Coast Computer Faire
for a time the biggest computer show in the world.
The Faire was where the PC really arrived. It's also where Jim got rich.
- So eh Jim is this where you hold all your meetings?
- Uhm as many as possible - sure why not.
- This is how silicon vallye entrepreneurs conduct business?
Believe it or not, Jim once taught mathematics at a
Catholic girls school.
Jim was immediately fascinated by the PC like many Bay Area hippies.
The California counter culture was crucial to the PC's development.
And the whole spirit there was working together, was sharing.
You shared your dope, you shared your bed, you shared your life,
you shared your hopes.
And a whole bunch of us had the same community spirit
and that permeated the whole Home Brew Computer Club.
As soon as somebody would solve a problem they'd come running
down to the Home Brew Computer Club's next meeting and say:
hey everybody you know that problem that all of us
have been trying to figure out how to solve,
here's the solution, isn't this wonderful?
Aren't I a great guy?
And it's my contention that that is a major component of why
Silicon Valley was able to
develop the technology as rapidly as it did,
because we were all sharing - everybody won!
Out of this creative show-and-tell came Apple Computer,
the first mass market PC company.
The Apple founders, a couple of recent graduates from
Homestead High were regulars at Homebrew meetings.
Steve Wozniak was the technical wizard
and Steve Jobs was the visionary who saw microcomputers
as a possible business.
The first Apple computer was primitive.
It was cobbled together by Woz to impress his friends
at the Hombrew meetings.
Everybody was interested in computers so I started getting
a crowd around me
because even although I was too shy to raise my hand
and say anything in a club meeting
after the club meetings I would put my computer that I had built and