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From: Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink>
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Subject: The Hobby Computer Culture
Date: Thu, 29 May 2025 02:17:27 -0000 (UTC)
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The Hobby Computer Culture
==========================

Posted on May 24, 2025 by technicshistory	

<https://technicshistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/
byte-july-1976.png>

[This post is part of "A Bicycle for the Mind." The complete series
can be found here.]

<https://technicshistory.com/a-bicycle-for-the-mind/>

From 1975 through early 1977, the use of personal computers remained
almost exclusively the province of hobbyists who loved to play with
computers and found them inherently fascinating. When BYTE magazine
came out with its premier issue in 1975, the cover called computers
"the world's greatest toy." When Bill Gates wrote about the value of
good software in the spring of 1976, he framed his argument in terms
of making the computer interesting, not useful: "...software makes
the difference between a computer being a fascinating educational
tool for years and being an exciting enigma for a few months and then
gathering dust in the closet." [1]

Even as late as 1978, an informed observer could still consider
interest in personal computers to be exclusive to a self-limiting
community of hobbyists. Jim Warren, editor of Dr. Dobb's Journal of
Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia, predicted a maximum market of
one million home computers, expecting them to be somewhat more
popular than ham radio, which attracted about 300,000. [2]

A survey conducted by BYTE magazine in late 1976 shows that these
hobbyists were well-educated (72% had at least a bachelor's degree),
well-off (with a median annual income of $20,000, or $123,000 in 2025
dollars), and overwhelmingly (99%) male. Based on the letters and
articles appearing in BYTE in that same centennial year of 1976, it
is clear that what interested these hobbyists above all was the
computers themselves: which one to buy, how to build it, how to
program it, how to expand it and to accessorize it. [3]

Discussion of practical software applications appeared infrequently.
One intrepid soul went so far as to hypothesize a microcomputer-based
accounting program, but he doesn't seem to have actually written it.
When  mention of software appeared it came most often in the form of
games. The few with more serious scientific and statistical work in
mind for their home computer complained of the excessive discussion
of "super space electronic hangman life-war pong." Star Trek games
were especially popular:  In July, D.E. Hipps of Miami advertised a
Star Trek BASIC game for sale for $10; in August, Glen Brickley of
Florissant, Missouri wrote about demoing his "favorite version of
Star Trek" for friends and neighbors; and in August, BYTE published,
with pride, "the first version of Star Trek to be printed in full in
BYTE" (though the author consistently misspelled "phasers" as
"phasors"). Most computer hobbyists were electronic hobbyists first,
and the electronics hobby grew up side-by-side with modern science
fiction, and shared its fascination with the possibilities of future
technology. We can guess that this is what drew them to this rare
piece of popular culture that took the future and the "what-ifs" it
poses seriously, rather than treating it as a mere backdrop for
adventure stories. [4]

<https://technicshistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/image-1.png>

The June 1976 issue of Interface is one of many examples of the
hobbyists' ongoing fascination with Star Trek.

Other than a shared interest in computers--and, apparently, Star
Trek--three kinds of organizations brought these men together: local
clubs, where they could share expertise in software and hardware and
build a sense of belonging and community; magazines like BYTE where
they could learn about new products and get project ideas; and retail
stores, where they could try out the latest models and shoot the shit
with fellow enthusiasts. The computer hobbyists were also bound by a
force more diffuse than any of these concrete social forms: a shared
mythology of the origins of hobby computing that gave broader social
and cultural meaning to their community.

The Clubs
=========

The most famous computer club of all, of course, is the Homebrew
Computer Club, headquartered in Silicon Valley, whose story is well
documented in several excellent sources, especially Steven Levy's
book, Hackers. Its fame is well-deserved, for its role as the
incubator of Apple Computer, if nothing else. But the focus of the
historical literature on Homebrew as the computer club has tended to
distort the image of American personal computing as a whole.

The Homebrew Computer Club had a distinctive political bent, due to
the radical left leanings of many of its leading members, including
co-founder Fred Moore. In 1959, Moore had gone on hunger strike
against the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program at
Berkeley, which had been compulsory for all students since the
nineteenth century. He later became a draft resister and published a
tract against institutionalized learning, Skool Resistance. Yet even
the bulk of Homebrew's membership stubbornly stuck to technical
hobbyist concerns, despite Moore's efforts to turn their attention to
social causes such as aiding the disabled or protesting nuclear
weapons. To the extent that personal computing had a politics, it was
a politics of independence, not social justice. [5]

<https://technicshistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/image.jpeg>

Cover of the second Homebrew Computer Club newsletter, with sketches
of members. Only Fred Moore is labeled, but the man with glasses on
the far right is likely Lee Felsenstein.

Moreover, excitement about personal computing was not at all a
phenomenon confined to the Bay Area. By the summer of 1975, Altair
shipments had begun in earnest, and clubs formed across the United
States and beyond where enthusiasts could share information and ask
for help with their new (or prospective) machines. The movement
continued to grow as new companies sprang up and shipped more hobby
machines. Over the course of 1976, dozens of clubs advertised their
existence or attempted to find a membership through classifieds in
BYTE, from the Oregon Computer Club headquartered in Portland (with a
membership of forty-nine), to a proposed club in Saint Petersburg,
Florida, mooted by one Allen Swan. But, as one might expect, the
largest and most successful clubs were concentrated in and around
major metropolitan areas with a large pool of existing computer
professionals, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City. [6]

The Amateur Computer Group of New Jersey convened for the first time
in June 1975, in under the presidency of Sol Libes. Libes, a
professor at Union County College, was another of those computer
lovers working on their own home computers for years before the
arrival of the Altair, who then suddenly found themselves joined by
hundreds of like-minded hobbyists once computing became somewhat more
accessible. Libe's club grew to 1,600 members by the early 1980s, had
a newsletter and software library, sponsored the annual Trenton
Computer Festival, and is likely the only organization from the hobby
computer years other than Apple and Microsoft to still survive today.
[7]

The Chicago Area Computer Hobbyist Exchange attracted several hundred
members to its first meeting at Northwestern University in the summer
of 1975. Like many of the larger clubs, they organized information
exchange around "special interest groups" for each brand of computer
(Digital Group, IMSAI, Altair, etc.). The club also gave birth to one
of the most significant novel software applications to emerge from
the personal computer hobby, the bulletin board system--we will have
more to say on that later in this series. [8]

The most ambitious--one might say hubristic--of the clubs was the
Southern California Computer Society (SCCS) of Los Angeles, founded
in Don Tarbell's apartment in June of 1975. Within the year the club
could boast of a glossy club magazine(in contrast to the cheap
newsletters of most clubs) called Interface, plans to develop a
public computer center, and--in answer to the challenge of Micro-Soft
BASIC--ideas about distributing their own royalty-free program
library, including "'branch' repositories that would reproduce and
distribute on a local basis." [9]

Not content with a regional purview, the leadership also encouraged
the incorporation of far-flung club chapters into their organization;
in that spirit, they changed their name in early 1977 to the
International Computer Society. Several chapters opened in
California, and more across the U.S, from Minnesota to Virginia, but
interest in SCCS/ICS chapters could be found as far away as Mexico
City, Japan, and New Zealand. Across all of these chapters, the group
accumulated about 8,000 members. [10]

The whole project, however, ran atop a rickety foundation of amateur
volunteer work, and fell apart under its own weight. First came the
breakdown in the relationship between the club and the publisher of
Interface, Bob Jones. Whether frustrated with the club's failure to
deliver articles to fill the magazine (his version), or greedy to
make more money as a for-profit enterprise (the club's version),
Jones broke away to create Interface Age, leaving SCCS scrambling to
start up its own replacement magazine. Expensive lawsuits flew in
both directions. Then came the mismanagement of the club's group buy
program: intended to save members money by pooling their purchases
into a large-scale order with volume discounts, it instead lost
thousands of members' dollars to a scammer: "a vendor," as one wry
commenter put it "who never vended" (the malefactor traded under the
moniker of "Colonel Winthrop.") [11]

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<https://technicshistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/image-4.png>

The December 1976 issues of SCCS Interface and Interface Age. Which
is authentic, and which the impostor?

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