Key Points:

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Throughout the club’s active history, the group developed new ways to keep in touch as well as better venues to host their meetings. At first, they meet in French’s garage. Later, they were able to secure the auditorium at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), until 1978 when they moved to the Stanford Medical School. They also began a newsletter to keep members informed on the group’s activities and meetings.

On March 5, 1975, the Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems or MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer arrived at Menlo Park, California. It was a review unit sent by People’s Computer Company. Gordon French and Fred Moore decided to host a gathering in French’s garage to discuss the new technology and invited anyone they thought would be interested. It was this first meeting that Steve Wozniak credits as the inspiration for the Apple I’s design.

The excitement and enthusiasm behind the technology and possibilities made the meeting a success. The group moved the next few meetings to a larger space in a home in Atherton, California which was previously used as a preschool. It was here that the newsletter came into being. After some time, the group moved their meeting spot once again to an auditorium at SLAC. The newsletter continued in print until December 1977. The next year, the club moved meeting spots one more time to the Stanford Medical School.

The meetings continued until December of 1986. For some time, the group was disorganized and considered to be non-existent until 2009 when many of the club’s original members formed a new group named the 6800 Club after the Motorola 6800 microprocessor. The group sometimes renames the club after new microprocessor releases and continues to meet monthly in Cupertino, California.

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The first meeting was around testing and reviewing the release of the MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer that just arrived in Menlo Park. Steve Wozniak often attributes the design of the Apple I to this meeting of the minds. From there, meetings expanded into further avenues of potential computing technology and software. They swapped ideas, circuits, and switches as they each pursued their computing developments. The group helped America’s hacker community to do the same by releasing a newsletter with detailed information on building personal computing devices like the Altair 8800.

After the group was able to secure meeting space at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, they adopted new rules around technology swaps and trades due to campus rules that prohibited the practice. The meetings were split into two. The first was a “formal” meeting held in the auditorium at SLAC and later at Stanford Medical School. Members would openly discuss ideas and present new findings, but could not actively trade parts. After the formal portion, members began to meet at secondary locations to trade. They met in a Safeway parking lot. Then they moved to a more appealing location, The Oasis, a bar local to Menlo Park.

The club grew organically from there. The interest in computing technology and its applications was growing steadily. Thus, interest in what the group discussed and meeting its members grew as well. The group helped to foster innovations and new ways to think about utilizing technology towards their goal. They also traded custom components to help each other work on different designs. It was an early form of open-source research.

1975-1978

1978-1986

In 1978, the group had found their home at Stanford. Stanford research in microprocessors helped the members to learn more about their craft. It also gave the group an academic platform to educate others and expand the reach of personal computing in everyday life. With the Stanford auditorium at their disposal, they were able to invite hundreds more to be a part of the club and witness presentations from its members like Steve Jobs, Ted Nelson, Lee Felsenstein, and others.

The club persisted until the members became too busy with their own companies and projects to find time to meet. Surviving members of the group have made reunion meetings since then and in 2009 some members decided to gather again to discuss new microprocessor releases.

Swap Meets

While the group was hosted at Stanford, they had to take to meeting off-campus to trade tech as Stanford has rules against swaps on campus grounds. However, this split of the wild nature of the group’s members from the professional portion of the meetings helped to create the culture of Silicon Valley. It also allowed more open access to the meetings which meant anyone who wanted to come, could.

Apple I

Bill Gate’s “Open Letter to Hobbyists”

MITS had grown successful in selling hardware personal computer kits, but the BASIC software created to go with it was seeing much less success. As BASIC was a requirement to truly operate the kits, Bill Gates quickly surmised that most users were stealing software. He then attempted to address the issue by drafting a letter explaining the costs of software development to convince the early software pirates that they were stealing. Unfortunately, this was not well received. Early pirates argued that software should be free.

Up Next…

Keep reading more of our related articles that surround the club and the “birth of Silicon Valley”.

  • Meet Steve Jobs — Complete Biography. The man, the myth, the legend: Steve Jobs. Explore The Complete History of the MITS Altair 8800. One of the early PCs that the group discussed. Andreessen Horowitz: The History of Silicon Valley’s Kingmakers. Read more about this very influential Silicon Valley venture capital firm that invests in digital technology.