0:09 [Music] [Applause]
0:14 hi I'm Bob Fringe Lee I'm here to tell
0:16 you the incredible story about personal
0:19 computers took over the world why am I
0:20 telling you this at a basketball game
0:22 well I like the game but mainly it's because
0:28 [Applause]
0:32 his name is Paul Allen and everything
0:34 you see here belongs to him the Portland
0:37 Trailblazers basketball team their arena
0:39 even the dancers
0:42 thanks to personal computers he has
0:44 eight billion dollars to spend on such toys
0:46 toys
0:49 20 years ago Allen and his high school
0:51 friend Bill Gates were running a two-man
0:53 software company called Microsoft
0:57 today Allen is richer than God and Gates
1:04 20 years ago young men like Paul Allen
1:05 and Bill Gates invented the personal
1:07 computer and in doing so launched a
1:08 revolution that's changed the way we
1:11 live work and communicate it's hard to
1:12 believe that 20 years ago there were no
1:14 personal computers now it's the third
1:16 largest industry in the world somewhere
1:18 between energy production and the
1:20 illegal drugs but the most amazing thing
1:21 of all is that it happened by accident
1:24 because a bunch of disenfranchised nerds
1:28 wanted to impress their friends [Music]
1:48 [Music] [Applause]
1:50 [Applause] [Music]
1:57 [Applause] [Music]
1:58 [Music] [Applause]
2:05 this is the story of how a handful of
2:07 guys launched an industrial revolution
2:10 how they change the culture of business
2:14 how they made history I feel incredibly
2:17 lucky to be at exactly the right place
2:19 in Silicon Valley at exactly the right
2:23 time historically where this invention
2:27 has taken form it wasn't like we both
2:29 thought it was gonna go a long ways it
2:31 was like we both do it for fun and even
2:32 though we're gonna lose some money
2:34 probably we'll just have been able to
2:36 say we had a company
2:39 all of us would get together and just
2:41 hope we were right that the PC would
2:44 become a big thing you know I stop and
2:47 say wow the PC really has and become
2:49 part of the very fabric the way people
2:52 live and we certainly surged with it and
2:55 I just stop and say he pretty incredible ride
3:02 [Music]
3:04 most of these people come from the place
3:05 I call home
3:07 the Silicon Valley south of San
3:09 Francisco California
3:11 growing up here near the electronics
3:12 companies that give the place its name
3:15 these founders of the PC revolution were
3:17 for the most part middle class white
3:19 kids from good suburban homes but it's
3:21 not their homes we're interested in it's
3:22 their garages [Music]
3:22 [Music] [Applause]
3:24 [Applause] [Music]
3:31 this is my garage and this is all my
3:34 junk and probably one of the few guys in
3:36 Silicon Valley who actually has room in
3:38 his garage for a car most everyone else
3:40 seems to use theirs to start computer
3:43 companies and create great fortunes but
3:45 I don't have a fortune I'm a failure
3:47 I've written computer programs that
3:49 almost ran and I've designed and built
3:51 hardware devices that frankly didn't
3:53 work at all but I'm the ideal guy to
3:55 tell the story of the personal computer
3:57 business because I'm its premiere gossip
3:59 columnist and everyone tells me all
4:02 their secrets and
4:05 this is my home where I write a gossip
4:07 column for a computing magazine sorry
4:10 about the mess
4:12 institutions in constant change like the
4:14 PC industry are driven by rumor and
4:17 gossip and I thrive on both my
4:19 electronic mail address is deluged with
4:21 inside information about everything from
4:23 product flaws to who's sleeping with whom
4:25 whom
4:28 what ties these gossipers together is a
4:31 desire for truth these people and their
4:32 love of technology have fueled the PC
4:35 revolution to understand them is to
4:37 understand that revolution so let's go
4:51 meet Edwin chin on a Saturday morning at
4:58 this could be 1976 or 1996 because there
5:00 is always a new generation of techies
5:02 like Edwin who hear the calling most
5:05 other kids are watching TV but not Edwin
5:08 you know interested in electronics and
5:11 technologies and a hobby since I started
5:13 when I was like six or seven
5:16 how old are you now Edwin 10 [Music]
5:18 [Music]
5:21 it's no coincidence that the only woman
5:24 in the vicinity looks bored because this
5:26 is a boy thing the obsession of a
5:28 particular type of boy who would rather
5:30 struggle with an electronic box than
5:32 with a world of unpredictable people we
5:35 call them engineers programmers hackers
5:37 and techies but mainly we call them
5:41 nerds I think a nerd is a person who
5:42 uses the telephone to talk to other
5:44 people about telephones
5:48 and a computer nerd therefore somebody
5:52 who uses a computer in order to use a computer
5:54 computer
5:56 and people have like different degrees
5:58 of passion different types of passion
5:59 you know some people like they just like
6:02 live databases and like fifth normal
6:03 form is just like Nirvana and like they
6:05 just quest for it you know like that's
6:12 what do your friends think of you well
6:18 but I don't mind I'm used to being
6:19 called a nerd
6:22 can't have other people stop your dreams
6:25 very wire and in Silicon Valley the
6:28 dream is to grow up to become a boy like this
6:34 Graham Spencer is chief programmer for
6:37 architects software six guys who
6:39 graduated from Stanford University and
6:42 started a company just because they like
6:44 each other
6:47 this is a modern day startup but at
6:49 heart it's no different from PC pioneers
6:52 like Apple or Microsoft nerds who share
6:55 a dream their hobby is their business
6:57 and the culture they've created is
6:59 identical to that of a thousand other
7:02 technology companies first they dumped
7:05 the idea of nine-to-five in this
7:07 industry you can work any eighty hours
7:11 per week you like my cat which I used to
7:14 cover my eyes and oh yes sleep in the
7:15 early morning well everybody's coming in
7:18 we didn't even obey a 24-hour clock we'd
7:20 come in and program for a couple days
7:24 straight we'd you know four or five of
7:25 us when it was time to eat we'd all get
7:27 in our cars kind of race over to the
7:29 restaurant and sit and talk about what
7:31 we're doing sometimes I get excited
7:32 talking about things I'd forget to eat
7:35 but then you just go back and program
7:37 some more it was us on our friends those
7:38 were fun days [Music]
7:46 [Music] [Applause]
7:54 let's look in the refrigerator whoa
7:57 we have coke and cold pizza two liters
7:59 of coke a day I do liters of coke a day
8:02 and and do you think of it like this
8:05 brain food that keeps me going that you
8:06 know listen to heavy metal and get
8:08 caffeinated and in hack [Music]
8:12 [Music]
8:15 I'd sit down in my room on the floor
8:16 with sheets of paper spread all around
8:18 with my computer design I was working on
8:20 and always I noticed that I was up
8:22 pretty late at night and I had lots of
8:29 combination of stale pizza and body odor
8:33 and sort of spilt Cola kind of ground
8:35 into the rug
8:38 I'd brought some spaghetti to work and
8:39 then forgot to wash out the container
8:41 for the last couple of days maybe six or
8:43 seven if I had to be honest oh
8:47 that smells bad
8:51 eating bathing having a girlfriend
8:53 having an active social life is it's a
8:55 dental it gets in the way of code time
8:58 you know writing code is is the primary
9:01 force it drives our lives so anything
9:10 what is it about the internal logic of a
9:12 computer that's so enticing for one
9:15 thing such logic can be understood as
9:17 opposed to things that can't be
9:19 understood at all like the motivations
9:22 of young women say or of the French let
9:24 me explain
9:27 time for the cringe Li crash course and
9:29 basic computers part 1 this is a
9:31 mainframe computer all of these cabinets
9:34 are one machine in the old days all
9:36 computers were this size they were
9:38 tended by engineers and white coats a
9:39 kind of priesthood who took their jobs
9:40 very seriously
9:42 now all computers work pretty much the
9:44 same whether it's a giant that serves
9:46 2,000 users like this one or a little
9:48 notebook that serves only me they
9:51 process numerical data adding
9:53 multiplying comparing fact is if you can
9:55 quantify it a computer can handle it
9:57 it's the emotional stuff they don't know
10:00 what to do with the data must be put
10:02 into a special binary code consisting
10:05 only of ones and zeroes and you have to
10:07 give the computer instructions also in
10:09 code to tell it exactly what to do with
10:11 the data and in what order these
10:14 instructions are called a program in the
10:16 early days you put in the instructions
10:18 by flipping switches or loaded them from
10:21 paper tape this was called machine
10:23 language it made computers a pain to use
10:26 even worse every type of computer spoke
10:29 a different machine language the ENIAC
10:31 would compute the 32nd trajectory of a
10:35 shell in 20 seconds operators required
10:38 two days to program it to do so
10:41 then a US Navy captain named Grace
10:43 Hopper solved the problem she invented a
10:46 computer language English words that the
10:48 computer itself could translate into
10:51 binary code now users could type whole
10:53 list of instructions into a computer
10:55 rather than flipping those damn switches
10:57 like most things having to do with
10:58 computers that first language had a
11:00 silly name COBOL it was followed by
11:02 other languages like Fortran and basic
11:04 and they all made computing just a bit
11:06 more user-friendly so when some nerd
11:07 tells you he's been up all night
11:09 programming or writing software or
11:11 hacking code what he really means is
11:13 he's been typing long list of
11:17 instructions in his computer
11:19 mainframe computers were far from
11:22 personal they sat in big air-conditioned
11:24 rooms at insurance companies phone
11:25 companies and the bank and their main
11:27 function was to get us confused with
11:29 some other guy named cringe Lee who was
11:32 a deadbeat and had a criminal record
11:35 eventually computer terminals did begin
11:37 to appear in some schools but most of us
11:39 paid no attention but there was usually
11:42 one kid who did pay attention falling in
11:43 love with the digital purity of those
11:47 ones and zeros he was the nerd and I
11:48 took this book home that described the
11:52 pdp-8 computer and it just odd it was
11:54 just like a Bible to me I mean all these
11:56 things that for some reason I'd fallen
11:57 in love with like you might fall in love
11:59 with a card game called magic or you
12:01 might fall in love with doing crossword
12:02 puzzles or something else or playing a
12:05 musical instrument I fell in love with
12:06 these little descriptions of computers
12:08 on their inside and was a little
12:09 mathematics I can work out some problems
12:12 on paper and solve it and see how it's
12:13 done and I could come up with my own
12:17 solutions and feel good in inside so you
12:19 would keyboard these commands in and
12:20 then you would wait for a while and then
12:21 the thing
12:26 would tell you something out but even
12:28 with that it was still remarkable
12:30 especially for a ten-year-old that you
12:32 could write a program in basic let's say
12:36 or Fortran and actually this machine
12:39 would sort of take your
12:45 it would it would sort of execute your
12:47 idea and give you back some results and
12:49 if they were the results that you
12:50 predicted your program really worked it
12:53 was an incredibly thrilling experience
12:55 nerds wanted their own computers right
12:57 from the beginning but it took a
12:59 technological breakthrough to make that
13:03 possible this is it the chip the
13:05 microprocessor this is what allows you
13:07 to have a mainframe computer on your
13:10 desk in the 1950s mainframes were as big
13:11 as this garage and that's because they
13:13 were filled with thousands of these
13:16 vacuum tubes or valves eventually the
13:17 valves were made much smaller and
13:20 replaced with transistors still too big
13:21 however to make a computer that could
13:23 fit on your desk what that took was
13:26 further miniaturization here we a single
13:28 piece of silicon etch with thousands of
13:30 transistors this microprocessor holds
13:32 more than a million transistors and
13:34 that's the secret of the personal
13:35 computer and that's why they call it
13:43 these are the people who invented the
13:50 Intel was started twenty-eight years ago
13:52 by a handful of guys after a row with
13:54 their old boss their microprocessors
14:03 Intel not only invented the chip they
14:04 are responsible for the laid-back
14:07 Silicon Valley working style everyone
14:10 was on a first-name basis there were no
14:12 reserved parking places no offices only
14:15 cubicles it's still true today here's
14:23 Gordon Moore is one of the Intel
14:26 founders worth three billion dollars
14:28 with money like that I'd have a door in
14:31 a business like this the people with the
14:32 power are the ones that have the
14:34 understanding of what's going on not
14:36 necessarily the ones on top it's very
14:38 important that those people that have
14:40 the knowledge are the ones that make the
14:43 decisions so we set up something where
14:46 everyone who had the knowledge at an
14:49 equal say what was going on
14:52 Intel's microprocessors kept getting
14:54 more powerful they soon had enough
14:56 horsepower to run a whole computer only
14:58 Intel didn't appreciate the brilliance
15:00 of their own product seeing it as useful
15:04 mainly for calculators or traffic lights
15:06 Intel had all the elements necessary to
15:09 invent the PC business but they just
15:10 didn't get it
15:18 this is the chip that launched the
15:30 this is the magazine that announced it
15:33 in January 1975 featured on the cover
15:35 was the world's first personal computer
15:39 the Altair 8800 it was the crazy idea of
15:42 an ex airforce officer from Georgia Edie Roberts
15:43 Roberts
15:45 if you look at it you know it was kind
15:49 of grandiose almost megalomaniac kind of
15:51 scheme you know and right now I couldn't
15:52 do it because I could see right off
15:54 there's no way you could do this to even
15:56 anyway you could do this
15:59 but at that time you know we just like the
16:00 the
16:03 the benefits of age and experience we
16:09 twenty years after Edie Roberts flash of
16:11 brilliance this exhibit is being held to
16:14 celebrate the anniversary of the Altair
16:17 like every other pc pioneer had built
16:19 his computer just because he wanted one
16:21 to play with there were some of us that
16:23 lusted after computers really at that
16:26 time all the computers in the world
16:28 tended to be in big centers and you had
16:30 to get permission to get close to them
16:31 and it was a you know you said nobody
16:33 could nobody had access to computers
16:35 then and the idea that you could have
16:36 your own computer and do whatever you
16:38 wanted to with it whenever you wanted to
16:47 and where was all this happening it was
16:50 far from Silicon Valley Intel or IBM out
16:52 in the desert near the airport in
16:53 Albuquerque New Mexico
16:55 Edie Roberts ran a calculator company
16:58 called MIT's having an ugly building
17:01 wasn't its only problem MIT's was going
17:03 bankrupt nobody was buying calculators
17:05 and Edie needed sixty five thousand
17:08 dollars just to stay afloat we went to
17:10 the bank and had a late night meeting
17:12 and the issue was whether we closed
17:14 midst down or Kippur they loaned us an
17:17 additional 65,000 and I was asked how
17:19 many machines that I think we would sell
17:21 in the next in the next year after was
17:23 introduced and I said 800 it was
17:25 considered a wild-eyed optimist at that
17:27 within a month after it was introduced
17:29 where we get 250 orders a day
17:32 the Altair wasn't even a computer it was
17:37 a computer kit whoa this is pretty well
17:40 you had to build it yourself and even
17:42 then it usually didn't work
17:45 still the demand was amazing and there
17:47 were actually people that came to MIT's
17:50 a couple people with camper trailers and
17:53 camped out in the parking lot waiting
17:55 for their machines I mean they were so
17:58 eager I mean I think everybody had sort
17:59 of daydream to Walter Mitty about owning
18:02 computer the surprise was that it would
18:05 be possible for the average college
18:07 student for example who was living on
18:09 bare subsistence to actually buy a computer
18:10 computer
18:13 this is what really amazed me was that
18:16 people were so there was a sort of a
18:18 pent-up demand for having your own computer
18:20 computer
18:22 and if it could be that cheap what a
18:31 this is an Altair computer the first
18:34 personal computer and not just any out
18:37 there this is Altair serial number two
18:40 the second one made the first Altair
18:43 made was sent off to be photographed at
18:45 a magazine it was lost in the mail so
18:47 this is the oldest personal computer in
18:49 the world
18:52 pretty historic junk but the question is
18:54 what do you do with it I mean it it has
18:56 a front panel with switches that you can
18:59 click back and forth and some lights but
19:01 in the back there's no place to connect
19:03 to keyboard there's no place to connect
19:05 a monitor there's no place to connect a
19:08 printer in fact there's practically
19:10 nothing at all that you can really do
19:12 with this thing but back then
19:25 the Nerds formed clubs to talk about
19:27 their new toy one of the first was the
19:29 homebrew Computer Club which met on
19:31 Wednesday evenings in a hall rented from
19:33 Stanford University in Silicon Valley
19:36 presiding over near Anarchy was Lee
19:38 felsenstein who pretended to be in
19:40 charge I would start the meeting by
19:42 making a horrendous loud noise
19:44 because everyone was talking and I had
19:47 to get some attention somehow and I
19:49 would use it to call on the person in
19:51 question I have made threatening
19:57 most of us were in the electronics
19:59 industry to a certain extent there was
20:01 also a stratum of physicians and there
20:03 were a lot of radio amateurs for
20:05 instance finding a new technology that
20:09 wasn't stale but most of us were at a
20:12 sort of middle level downwards we saw
20:16 ourselves as crazed ignored geniuses or
20:18 possibly geniuses but at least we could
20:21 each hope to get our hands on a computer
20:28 the very uselessness of the Altair is
20:30 what drove the hobbyists together Roger
20:32 melon and Harry garland started an early
20:34 computer company they came here to meet
20:36 others and to figure out just what the
20:38 heck could be done with this new toy a
20:42 solution in search of a problem that I
20:45 can see the Altair was tedious to use at
20:46 first the only way that data and
20:48 instructions could be given to the
20:50 computer was by flipping switches take
20:53 something trivial like two plus two each
20:55 - needed eight different switches to be
20:57 flipped the nanites which was used to
20:59 load them all add required another nine
21:02 switches the answer for was if the third
21:06 light from the left turned on Eureka so
21:07 if you had a program that was a hundred
21:08 bytes long you and I go through this
21:10 procedure a hundred times to load that
21:13 in the memory it took a long time I bet
21:15 it did and what happened if you lost
21:17 power or you lost your way in the middle
21:19 you cried
21:22 the Altair may have been frustrating but
21:24 it drove the Nerds to experiment finding
21:27 real uses for the useless box turning it
21:30 from a curiosity to a computer steve
21:34 dompier set up an altar
21:36 laborious lakitu program into it
21:38 somebody knocked the plug out of the
21:40 wall and he had to do that all over
21:42 again but nobody knew what this was about
21:43 about
21:46 after all it wasn't just gonna sit in
21:48 flashes lights no you put a little
21:51 transistor radio next to the El tear and
21:54 he would by manipulating the length of
21:56 loops in the software could play tunes
21:58 the radio began playing the fool on the hill
22:03 dadada and the tinny little tunes that
22:05 you could tell we're coming from the
22:08 noise that the computer was generated
22:10 being picked up by the radio everybody
22:13 rose and applauded I propose that he
22:15 received the stripped Phillips screw
22:18 award for finding a use for something
22:20 previously thought useless but I think
22:22 everyone was too busy applauding to even
22:25 hear me it was a very exciting thing it
22:27 was probably the first thing the Altair
22:33 turning the Altair into a useful tool
22:35 required a programming language so users
22:38 could type their programs in rather than
22:40 flipping switches what it needed was a
22:42 version of some big computer language
22:45 like basic only modified for the PC this
22:47 was called a basic interpreter but it
22:49 didn't yet exist because the experts all
22:52 thought that not even basic was basic
22:54 enough to fit inside the tiny Altair
22:58 memory yet again the experts were wrong
23:00 here comes the guy who solved the
23:03 problem twenty years after finishing the
23:05 first microcomputer basic Paul Allen is
23:07 returning to Albuquerque for a
23:09 celebration of that event this time with
23:11 his 15 million-dollar jet and three foot
23:17 at a time when I was killing brain cells
23:25 he has come to eat rubber chicken in
23:27 honor of the Altair's 20th anniversary
23:40 Allen co-founded Microsoft with his
23:42 younger buddy from high school Bill
23:44 Gates one day in Boston I was in Harvard
23:47 Square and I covered popular chronics
23:49 with this thing that looked like what
23:51 I'd been imagining and so I grabbed it
23:52 off the shelf I looked at it and I
23:54 bought it and I you know ran back to
23:56 Bill's dorm and I think he was probably
23:58 playing poker that night and usually
24:01 losing money at that point
24:04 that's okay I
24:08 showed that to me then okay here was a
24:11 company that would be needing software
24:13 and he's okay well we got a call we got
24:15 to call these guys up and see if this
24:16 thing is for real we realized that
24:18 things were starting to happen and just
24:21 because we'd had a vision for a long
24:23 time of where this chip could go what it
24:25 could mean that didn't mean the industry
24:28 was gonna wait for us while I stayed and
24:31 finished my degree at Harvard so called
24:33 up and you know we told we've got this
24:35 basic it it's just you know for your
24:36 machine it's you know it's it's not that
24:38 far from being done and we'd like to
24:40 come out and show teeth so we created
24:42 this basic interpreter Paul took the
24:46 paper tape and and flew out in fact the
24:48 night before he he got some sleep while
24:51 I double-checked everything to make sure
24:54 that we had had it all right but I'd had
24:56 no idea but it was really gonna be like
24:57 to try to run the software I had never
25:00 been running an actual computer before
25:02 he was very nervous about whether this
25:05 would actually work and he got to the
25:07 office and we all gathered around and he
25:10 put his fingers on the switches and he
25:13 loaded basic in with paper tape into the
25:16 Altair I was just I was so nervous I
25:20 just this is just awkward and it came up
25:22 and it could do a few little simple
25:24 things and it was amazing when Paul
25:25 called me up and said the thing that
25:27 worked the first time and of course it
25:29 was incredibly fast and it pretty dope
25:31 memory size and I think Bill said well
25:34 it printed something
25:37 oh that was that was unbelievable the
25:40 fact that it really worked was was it
25:42 was a breakthrough maybe there wouldn't
25:44 be a Microsoft if it hadn't if the
25:46 screen hadn't come alive who knows it
25:57 after the demo succeeded bill forgot
25:59 about finishing University afraid of
26:01 missing his chance to dominate the new
26:03 industry he joined Allen in what was
26:05 then the center of world micro computing
26:08 research among the sleazy bars and gas
26:10 stations of Albuquerque New Mexico [Music]
26:13 [Music]
26:15 and they lived across the street from
26:19 MIT's in the sundowner motel and the
26:21 prostitutes and the drug dealers are out
26:24 on the corner they were writing basic
26:26 for the Altair computer and
26:29 gradually they actually started
26:31 Microsoft here in Albuquerque so we
26:34 heard some some of our high school
26:37 friends basically come down and
26:39 stay with us in our apartment which
26:41 became very crowded we were pretty young
26:45 we started when I was 19 and so he just
26:47 had a lot of a lot of energy they worked
26:50 really hard they listened to really loud
26:53 music I could hardly stand to go in the
26:54 software room sometimes because the
26:56 music would be banging off the walls
27:04 you know we usually go out deep pizzas
27:06 and then go out and watch
27:14 they would work all night long and there
27:16 were days when Bill Gates would be
27:18 sleeping on the floor and the software
27:21 lab and sometimes would be buildings to
27:24 other guys all you know sitting on
27:26 tables around the apartment with stacks
27:27 and stacks of paper right true
27:30 converting the basic for the idat I
27:32 still hold the source code by heart and
27:34 that was a
27:38 work of love when we just kept tuning
27:40 and tuning that thing and so that kind
27:43 of craftsmanship paid off [Music]
27:46 [Music]
27:49 basic let the Altair be used for both
27:52 fun stuff and real work people attach
27:54 terminals to the computer and began
27:56 writing games word processors and
27:59 accounting programs most of us didn't
28:01 notice but soon there was a thriving
28:04 industry for enthusiasts by the end of
28:07 1975 dozens of other companies were
28:09 building microcomputers
28:12 we created an industry and I think that
28:14 goes completely unnoticed I mean there
28:16 was nothing every aspect of the industry
28:17 where you saw that software hardware
28:20 application stuff dealerships you name
28:21 it was all done at this it was a wild
28:24 time it was a very exciting time and
28:27 that the first user convention well we
28:29 got people to come in and tell us what
28:30 they were doing what they were excited
28:33 about and other companies like
28:36 processor technology or M sire command
28:39 Co got going is add-on companies these
28:40 companies are long forgotten but they
28:43 were the humble beginnings of the of the
28:46 PC industry
28:48 left in the hands of those early
28:50 hobbyists the PC might have never made
28:52 it to the shopping mall
28:54 reaching the wider market required a
28:57 different type of vision enter the
28:59 flower children of California who
29:09 from the safety of secret committees
29:13 it talked about the pain Juhu remember
29:15 that the 60s happened in the early 70s
29:16 right so we have to remember that and
29:17 that's sort of when I came of age so I
29:22 saw a lot of this and to me the spark of
29:27 that was that there was something beyond
29:34 it's the same thing that causes people
29:37 to want to be poets instead of bankers
29:40 and I think that's a wonderful thing and
29:45 I think that that same spirit can be put
29:47 into products and those products can be
29:48 manufactured and given to people and
29:51 they can sense that spirit to help you
29:53 understand all this I will now take off
29:57 my clothes why he says well frame relay
30:00 is scalable Jim Warren knows better than
30:02 most what the hippie movement did for
30:05 the PC a 60s radical himself he staged
30:07 the West Coast computer fair for a time
30:09 the biggest computer show in the world
30:12 the fair was where the PC really arrived
30:16 it's also where Jim got rich so Jim is
30:19 this where you hold all your meetings um
30:21 as many as possible
30:24 sure why not this is how Silicon Valley
30:27 entrepreneurs connect business I don't
30:27 know how there's how entrepreneurs
30:30 believe it or not and Jim once taught
30:38 Jim was immediately fascinated by the PC
30:40 like many Bay Area hippies the
30:43 California counterculture was crucial to
30:45 the PCs development and and the whole
30:48 spirit there was working together was
30:50 sharing you shared your dope you shared
30:52 your bed you shed
30:56 you said your life you shed your hopes
30:59 and a whole bunch of us had the same
31:03 community spirit and that permeated the
31:04 whole homebrew Computer Club as soon as
31:06 somebody would solve a problem they'd
31:07 come running down to the homebrew
31:09 Computer Club next meeting say hey
31:10 everybody you know that problem that all
31:12 of us have been trying to figure out how
31:14 to solve here's the solution isn't this
31:16 wonderful aren't I great guy and it's my
31:18 contention that that is a major
31:21 component of why Silicon Valley was able
31:23 to develop the technology as rapidly as
31:25 it did because we were all sharing
31:28 everybody one
31:31 out of this creative show-and-tell came
31:34 Apple Computer the first mass-market PC
31:36 company the Apple founders a couple of
31:38 recent graduates from Homestead High
31:41 were regulars at homebrew meetings Steve
31:43 Wozniak was the technical wizard and
31:45 Steve Jobs was the visionary who saw
31:48 microcomputers as a possible business
31:51 the first Apple Computer was primitive
31:53 it was cobbled together by woz to
31:55 impress his friends at the homebrew
31:57 meetings everybody was interested in
31:58 computers so I started getting a crowd
32:00 around me because even though I was too
32:01 shy to raise my hand and say anything in
32:04 a club meeting after the club meetings I
32:06 would put my my computer that I had
32:08 built and every week it had a little bit
32:10 more working on it too but I would set
32:11 it down and let people type on the
32:13 keyboard I would explain what's in it if
32:14 they come up to me and ask a question I
32:15 can answer
32:18 you know nowadays I would have the
32:19 ability to tell them what I got in
32:21 groups started gathering around me and
32:23 Steve Jobs saw that I had a lot of
32:24 interest around me at the club and he
32:27 said let's start selling it and let's
32:28 make this company came up with the name
32:31 Apple and and
32:39 Apple was at best a funky company
32:41 started by a couple of teenage hackers
32:44 who previously had been working as Alice
32:45 in Wonderland characters in a local
32:47 shopping mall and they started it in
32:50 this garage right here the first Apple
32:51 Computer was built here now there are
32:53 more than 10 million in use around the
32:56 world and I was there well for a short
32:57 time I was an employee at Apple Computer
32:59 employee number 12 and one day I helped
33:03 move materials out of this garage at the
33:05 time Steve Jobs said the company was
33:07 short of loot so he offered to pay me in
33:09 company shares that I held out for the
33:12 money my mother still reminds me of that
33:14 incident the
33:16 Apple one was even less of a computer
33:20 than the Altair a single circuit board
33:22 that came with neither a case nor a
33:25 keyboard still Steve Jobs managed to
33:28 sell 50 Apple ones that experience
33:29 showed jobs that there was a market for
33:32 a real computer the Apple 2
33:35 it was very clear to me that while there
33:38 were a bunch of hardware hobbyists they
33:40 could assemble their own computers or at
33:42 least take our board and add the
33:43 transformers for the power supply in the
33:45 case and the keyboard and go get a you
33:46 know etc go get the rest of the stuff
33:49 for every one of those there were a
33:51 thousand people that couldn't do that
33:52 but wanted to mess around with
33:56 programming software hobbyists just like
33:58 I had been when I was you know 10
34:00 discovering that computer and so my
34:02 dream for the Apple 2 was to sell the
34:06 first real packaged computer
34:09 Steve Jobs his dream was impossible it
34:12 needed too many chips making the product
34:13 too complicated and expensive to build
34:17 but woz didn't know it was impossible
34:20 and then I got into way of why have
34:22 memory for your TV screen and memory for
34:24 your computer make them one and that
34:26 shrunk the chips down and I shrunk the
34:28 chips here and why not take all these
34:30 timing circuits I looked through manuals
34:31 and found a chip that did it in one chip
34:34 instead of five and reduced that and one
34:35 thing after another after another
34:37 happened I wound up with so few chips
34:40 when I was done I said hey the computer
34:41 that you could program to generate
34:44 colored patterns on a screen or data or
34:46 words or play games or anything and we
34:48 the computer I wanted you know for
34:50 myself pretty much and
34:53 but it had turned out so good he said I
34:54 think we have a computer we could sell a
34:57 thousand a month of how can you sell
34:59 thousands a month you know but we needed
35:01 some money for tooling the case and
35:02 things like that we needed we needed a
35:04 few hundred thousand dollars that was a
35:05 lot of money for two people who had
35:07 nothing in their lives to speak up
35:09 didn't have a foreigner dollar bank
35:11 account so I went looking for some
35:14 venture capital the scruffy 19 year old
35:16 seduced the conservative world of
35:18 venture capitalists the man jobs
35:20 persuaded to part with his cash was
35:22 Arthur Rock the inventor of venture
35:24 capital and the man who had originally
35:27 funded Intel at least the Intel boys had
35:29 graduated from University and owned
35:34 suits well he wore sandals and he had
35:37 long very long hair and beard and
35:41 mustache but very articulate
35:46 he was I think you at one time in his
35:47 life and it was probably when I first
35:51 met him that he ain't nothing but fruit
35:55 so as a mainline venture capitalist is
35:59 this is this is not the norm this is not
36:06 with money in hand and under occasional
36:08 adult supervision from an X Intel
36:11 manager named Mike Markkula woz and jobs
36:13 finished the Apple 2 and ordered a local
36:17 factory to build 1,000 machines
36:20 two years passed between the Altair and
36:22 the Apple 2 and in that time a lot of
36:25 things changed we went from a computer
36:26 that was designed for hobbyists and
36:28 engineers and certainly looked like a
36:30 piece of test equipment to a computer
36:32 that looked like a piece of consumer
36:34 electronics and we can thank Steve Jobs
36:37 for that his sense of design demanded
36:39 that this structural phone case be used
36:41 for the Apple 2 the first case of its
36:43 type on a personal computer and not that
36:45 there wasn't good engineering inside
36:47 either the Apple 2 was a model of
36:49 efficient engineering here's the floppy
36:51 disk drive controller for example there
36:53 are eight chips here where previously
36:55 there would have been 35 this is an
36:56 amazing bit of engineering that we can
36:58 attribute to Steve Wozniak who is
37:01 certainly the Mozart of digital design
37:04 and all told it turned the Apple 2 into
37:12 the Apple 2 was launched at Jim Warren's
37:14 West Coast computer fair one of the
37:17 first big microcomputer shows the 1978
37:19 show drew thousands of attendees and
37:21 dozens of exhibitors many of the members
37:23 of the homebrew Computer Club which
37:25 spawned most of the early microcomputer
37:27 companies but there was only one company
37:29 showing something that looked like a
37:31 modern personal computer right by the
37:34 entrance in a prime spot negotiated by
37:37 Steve Jobs sat the Apple to it
37:40 mesmerized Dahl who saw it my
37:43 recollection as we stole the show and a
37:45 lot of dealers and distributors started
37:48 lining up and we were off and running
37:50 how old were you
38:00 following the West Coast computer fair
38:02 the next two years were ones of
38:04 explosive growth for Apple with
38:06 thousands of customers arriving on the
38:08 doorstep of the tiny office in Cupertino California
38:09 California
38:12 sales and profits grew so quickly that
38:14 Apple had more money than the company
38:16 could spend and the company was very
38:19 young the founders were in their 20s and
38:22 some employees were even younger like 14
38:24 year old Chris Espinosa who never left
38:27 he still works in Apple almost twenty
38:29 years later there would be public
38:31 demonstrations of our product every
38:33 Tuesday and Thursday afternoon at 3
38:35 o'clock and that was good because it was
38:38 after school so I would get out of my
38:40 you know sophomore junior year of high school
38:41 school
38:43 I would ride my little moped down to the
38:45 Apple offices and at three o'clock I'd
38:47 given the demonstrations of the Apple to
38:50 when we were in the office it was paid
38:52 jokes and wiring up people's phones to
38:54 do weird things just every one of us I
38:55 mean there wasn't there wasn't a person
38:57 in Apple I don't think for a couple of
38:59 years that was you know super serious we
39:02 were lucky we had like the hot product
39:04 of its day and some of the people that I
39:06 did original demos to came up to me
39:09 years later and said you know I found it
39:10 a hundred million dollar chain of
39:13 computer stores based on the demo you
39:15 showed the one Tuesday afternoon at
39:17 Apple it's a really fun it went so
39:19 successful that all of a sudden Steve
39:21 and I wouldn't have to worry about worth
39:22 for the rest of our lives and then it
39:24 got even more successful and more
39:27 successful after that and
39:31 it was sort of sort of a shock
39:33 the Apple to set a new standard for
39:35 personal computers and showed there was
39:37 some real money to be made rival
39:39 companies popped up all over but the
39:41 market was still hobbyists guys with big
39:43 beards who thought a good use for their
39:45 computer was controlling a model train
39:49 sales the actual program but for micro
39:52 computers to be taken seriously they had
39:53 to start doing things that needed doing
39:56 functions that were useful not just for fun
40:03 the enthusiast market had its limits to
40:05 reach the rest of us the Apple 2 needed
40:07 what nerds call a killer application
40:09 software that's so useful that people
40:13 will buy computers just to run it for
40:15 the Apple 2 this application was called
40:17 visit CalPERS it came straight from the
40:18 blackboards of the Harvard Business School
40:23 invented by a graduate student Dan
40:25 Bricklin with his programmer friend Bob
40:27 Frankston VisiCalc was the first
40:30 electronic spreadsheet a
40:33 spreadsheet is a tool for financial
40:34 planning bringing together for the first
40:37 time the seduction of money with the
40:39 power of micro computing
40:41 dan Brooklands professor at Harvard
40:43 showed how companies used a grid of
40:45 numbers on a blackboard to work out
40:48 profits and expenses 60 down here and
40:51 your profit would be this minus this
40:53 which gives you 40 and then well let's
40:55 see what's the sales growth we'll say
40:58 there's a the trick to a spreadsheet is
41:00 that all the values in the table are
41:02 related to the others and so changes in
41:04 one year would ripple through the table
41:06 affecting prices and profits in
41:07 subsequent years
41:09 students were asked to calculate how
41:11 future profits would be affected by
41:14 various business scenarios it was called
41:15 running the numbers and they did it
41:19 laborious ly by hand well let's say your
41:22 initial costs have 100 fixed cost at the
41:24 beginning so now you have a minus 20 is
41:26 how much you make the first year and the
41:29 second year you have a hundred but your
41:33 your variable let's say is is 25 so now
41:36 you're you're losing what is it there's
41:37 a pain the neck it wasn't pretty good
41:41 I'm 80 what no no we failed we just saw
41:44 -15 right and then eventually you're
41:45 making money what year do we make money
41:47 and you know and how much does the cost
41:48 of money that's what running the numbers
41:51 was because each value was linked to the
41:53 others one mistake could mean disaster
41:56 blow us all your numbers afterwards
41:57 because you make all your calculations
41:59 based on other numbers before them if I
42:01 had miscalculated Dan who had worked as
42:03 a programmer started daydreaming about
42:06 how he could use a computer to replace
42:09 the tedious hand calculations I imagined
42:10 that there was this magic whiteboard
42:12 that did like word processing does word
42:14 rapping if you make a change to a word
42:15 it automatically pulls everything back
42:17 well why don't we calculate the same way
42:20 so that if I changed my number you know
42:22 I should have used 10% instead of 12% I
42:24 just put it in and it would recalculate
42:26 everything go through it you know and
42:28 that would be as it's this idea of
42:29 electronic spreadsheet
42:32 following a model that's common today
42:34 Dan Bricklin designed the program but
42:36 got his friend Bob Frankston to write
42:39 the actual computer code so it's after
42:41 months of programming late at night when
42:43 computer time was cheaper the Harvard
42:45 Business School blackboards came to life
42:48 now we've set this up okay then we type
42:49 a new value in okay here I'm going to
42:51 take that 100 and I'm going to change it
42:54 right and here in recalculate whoa
42:57 that's save me so much time people who
42:59 saw it and Witten got it but I can
43:00 account remember showing up to one
43:03 around here and he started shaking it
43:05 said that's what I do all week I could
43:07 do it in an hour but I could do you know
43:09 you know and they would take their
43:10 credit cards and shove them in your face
43:12 I meet these people now they can look to
43:14 me and say I got to tell you you know it
43:21 we didn't we did not use the word
43:23 spreadsheet but nobody knew a
43:25 spreadsheet was I came up with an
43:28 invisible calculator or VisiCalc because
43:31 you might emphasize that aspect there's
43:34 a calc hit the market in October 1979
43:37 selling for $100 Marv Goldschmidt sold
43:39 the first copies from his computer store
43:42 in Bedford Massachusetts after a slow
43:45 start VisiCalc took off what it did in
43:47 our society it gave people who were
43:49 obsessed numbers whether they're in
43:51 business or at home how much of my worth
43:53 today was my stock portfolio worth how
43:54 am i doing he gets budget on this project
43:55 project
43:59 they gave them ability to play with
44:00 scenarios and change it and say well if
44:02 I do this
44:05 so put people in a sense in control of
44:07 the thing that lots of people in our
44:15 the spreadsheet was every business man's
44:17 crystal ball it answered all those what
44:20 if questions what if I fire the
44:22 engineering department what if I invest
44:25 ten million dollars in pantyhose futures
44:28 look I'll be rich in under a year and
44:31 have slimmer thighs at the same time the
45:09 many fresh out of college drawn here by
45:24 [Music]
45:27 in five years the PC had gone from a
45:30 hobbyist toy to an engine that shaped
45:33 the times we lived in thanks to visit
45:36 count the Apple 2 made history
45:38 everybody you talk to just seemed
45:39 excited about talking about what we were
45:43 doing and there was this huge media
45:44 explosion kind of like the internet is
45:47 receiving today of this is the happening
45:49 thing you read about it over and over
45:50 and over and every time you took an
45:51 airplane flight you read about him every
45:52 newspaper every week you'd read
45:54 something about small computers come in
45:55 and Apple was one of the highlight
45:57 companies so we were being portrayed as
46:01 a leader of a revolution and we really
46:02 felt that we were a leader of a
46:03 revolution we were gonna change life a lot
46:05 lot
46:07 pretty good for a company started in a
46:10 garage three years before
46:13 but not all the PC pioneers made great
46:15 fortunes using Dan Bricklin decided not
46:17 to patent his spreadsheet idea though
46:19 more than 100 million spreadsheets had
46:22 been sold since 1979 Bricklin and
46:23 Frankston haven't earned VisiCalc
46:26 royalties in years you know looking back
46:27 at how successful a lot of other people
46:28 have been it's kind of sad that we
46:31 weren't successful it would be very nice
46:33 too because iliyan heirs
46:37 thought he can also understand that part
46:39 of the reason was that that's not what
46:42 we're trying to do work into the 60s and
46:43 what do you want to do you wanted to
46:46 make the world better and you wanted to
46:47 make your mark in the world and improve
46:50 things we did it so by the mark of what
46:52 we would measure ourselves by we're very
46:54 successful yes
46:59 and what about Edie Roberts three years
47:01 and forty thousand computers after
47:03 assembling that first Altair the fun was
47:06 over for Edie mitts was just another
47:08 player in what had become a competitive
47:10 market for personal computers Roberts
47:13 sold his company in 1978 and started a
47:15 new life he went back to his native
47:18 Georgia and retrained as a doctor I
47:20 really felt anything all about the last
47:22 few years when people sort of taken
47:24 credit for things that we did in meds
47:26 and that's the only thing I think about
47:28 it irritates me the things that we did
47:30 in medicine we took all heat for other
47:32 people trying to take
47:34 that frustrates me
47:37 while Eadie Roberts invented the
47:39 personal computer it was the founders of
47:41 Apple who got rich when Apple went
47:43 public in spectacular fashion in 1980
47:46 jobs and woz became multimillionaires
47:50 the Nerds had inherited the earth I was worth
47:56 about over a million dollars when I was
47:57 23 and
48:00 over 10 million dollars when I was 24
48:01 and over a hundred million dollars when
48:03 I was 25 and
48:10 it wasn't that important because I never
48:12 did it for the money
48:14 it was just a little hobby company like
48:16 a lot of people do not thinking anything
48:19 of it I mean it wasn't it wasn't like we
48:21 both thought it was going to go a long
48:23 ways it was like we both do it for fun
48:25 but back then there was a short window
48:28 in time where one person who could sit
48:30 down and do some neat good designs could
48:33 turn them into a huge thing like the
48:34 Apple cool [Applause]
48:48 [Applause]
48:50 it's astonishing that at the beginning
48:53 of 1975 nobody owned a personal computer
48:55 all there was was a mock-up on a
48:58 magazine cover yet within five years
48:59 there had emerged here in Silicon Valley
49:02 a billion-dollar industry an unhealthy
49:04 fascination with technology on the part
49:06 of a few adolescents had awakened the
49:09 nerd within us all PC companies were
49:11 sprouting like mushrooms to meet the
49:13 enormous demand Apple had emerged as the
49:16 top fungus and had taken 50% of the
49:19 market to the boys in Cupertino every
49:21 day seemed like Christmas but Scrooge
49:23 was around the corner there was a
49:25 company that everyone associated with
49:27 the word computer a company that
49:29 expected no demanded to dominate its
49:33 market IBM Big Blue was on the move and
49:35 Silicon Valley would soon be feeling the reverberations
50:08 [Music] [Applause]
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