Excerpt:
My first exposure to computers was at age 6 (1963), as a subject in Dr. Patrick Suppes' accelerated mathematics experiment at Stanford. I was taken to a small room with what I now know was a CRT display and an intercom. I was asked to push some keys in response to some shapes on the screen. Afterwards, they showed me around a large room filled with big cabinets, some with lots of blinking white lights. They said it was a "computer" and its name was the "PDP-1". A tall thin man asked me to hit a key on a console to make a "decktape". I had absolutely no idea what a "DEC tape" was at the time, but when I hit the key, a small pair of reels BEGAN TO TURN!! It was a moment I would never forget.
Annotation:
This site is an informal memoir written by Bob Lash, an early member of the Homebrew Computer Club. Homebrew was a computer hobbyist group made famous by contributing to the success of two of it's members, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniac. The site is definitely geared toward enthusiasts who are familiar with the early technology, but those who can invest the time to learn the lingo will find a rich source of information about the underground technology scene that inspired the development of personal computing in the mid-1970s. The site is basic with a simple text narrative wrapped around a few graphics. The links in the site lead mostly to a few images, but there are some links that point to the sites of other early members of the Homebrew community.