Only The Paranoid Survive
Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove
(Source- http://www.kpbs.org)
This article is an attempt at “dramatic” retelling of some seminal events in the timeline of personal computing that I personally (pun intended) enjoyed reading about, from various sources. Juxtaposed in order to pit our forgotten tragic hero Ed Roberts against more familiar names renown for their street-smarts and ruthlessness, this is a reflection on following the opportunity versus the pursuit of passion.
Act-1
Scene-1: Silicon Valley
“Only the Paranoid Survive”- thus spake Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel- a company that’s built its fortune on designing microprocessors for the personal computer. Back in 1974 however, microprocessors weren’t a lucrative business yet. Intel was a little known company that primarily sold semiconductor memory- SRAM and DRAM chips. And computing was far from personal.
Chapter 1 of almost any text on Computer Architecture is bound to present a classification of computers into different groups, on the basis of their size- into mainframes, minicomputer, personal computers etc. For a long time however, the term “computer” itself was almost synonymous with giant IBM “mainframes”, that consisted of several cabinets sprawled across entire air-conditioned rooms in huge corporations, banks and phone companies.
Of course, for all its grandeur, one of these giant IBM 360 model 75 mainframe is no match to an iPhone5’s tiny A6 processor chip. Which is a real pity, considering that IBM 360 model 75 was the machine that was used in the launch of Apollo 11- to calculate lift-off data and for monitoring environmental and bio-medical data, way back in 1969. Fast forward to today, one of the more popular use-cases for the iPhone, is launching ill-tempered birds onto unsuspecting pigs.
Fortunately, none of IBM’s customers were complaining about performance of these leviathans back then; not many could afford the mainframe’s $2-$3.5 million price tag in the first place (monthly rentals cost anywhere between $50,000 and $80,000). Of course, once you bought them you had to contend with the thousand dollar monthly electric bill.
As “transistor” technology matured, it became possible around mid-60s to create a class of computers called “mini-computers”, that had a price-tag in the $100,000 range. Around 1975, one such machine, that was a favorite among universities and scientists, was DEC’s 32-bit PDP-10.
Microcontrollers, which basically combine several of these discrete transistors onto a single chip, were starting to appear on the scene, mainly in electronic calculators, and for “logic” tasks in automation systems, traffic lights etc (if you’ve ever take a course on microprocessors/microcontrollers, you’ll be asked to write that customary traffic light controller program in 8086 Assembly language- if you think that’s a trivial class project, remind yourself that back in the 70s you could have made a fortune if you had been among the first to write that program). In 1974, Intel came out with a second offering of its 8-bit microcontroller, which it called the Intel 8008.
A subsequent chain of events convinced Andy to divert his company’s resources, away from the DRAM business to invest in the microprocessor unit, believing that’s where Intel’s future lie. The gamble paid off and how! Intel would go on to become the largest and highest valued semiconductor company in terms of revenue. Strangely though, Intel did not see the potential of their own product, until the “father of personal computing” took a chance on this memory company.
Act-2
Scene-1: Albuquerque, New Mexico
You’ve probably never heard of Ed Roberts- after all this man did not spout any immortal lines that one can recall. He did not go on to become the richest man in the world. He did not have movies made and books written about his life.
But believe it or not, Ed Roberts conceived, designed and brought to market, the first commercially successful personal computer- the Altair 8800.
A hefty 6’4’’ ex-Air force officer from rural Georgia, Henry Edward Roberts, founded a company called Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry systems (MITS) in 1970, that primarily sold electronic calculators. Ed staked the future of a near-bankrupt MITS on his vision of producing a sub-$400 alternative to the minicomputers of the time. The result was an 17” x 18” x 7” electronic kit that you could buy for the price of MacBook Pro Retina Display today (inflation adjusted), except that the kit didn’t come with a CRT monitor, keyboard or any kind of software at all.
It had a front panel of switches, modeled after a prominent minicomputer of the time, Data General’s NOVA2 (Data General was the Pepsi of the minicomputer industry, the number two that had sprung out of DEC). You had to key in the program and data in machine language, and binary output would be displayed on a panel of LEDs. Ed had invented an entire class of computers called micro-computers, named so not for its dismal performance (8 bit CPU with 16 bit addressing running on 64KB of main memory at processor speeds of 2Mhz- contrast that with PDP-10’s 1152KB main memory running at 10Mhz clock- what that means is similar compute power, but a ten fold smaller memory to run the programs, and a 30x shrinkage in volume), but more for the technological breakthrough it represented.
The entire logic of a minicomputer had been shrunk from a full cabinet to a 20mm squared die that fit in a 18-pin DIP package. Living in the world of smart watches, its tough to fathom the full depth of what Ed contributed to the computing world as a visionary genius, a prudent designer, a customer-oriented businessman and a risk-taking entrepreneur who gave the unknowns, a shot at greatness. The hobbyists were elated to be able to get their hands on this machine and their imagination ran berserk. But to the rest of us, Altair 8800 would mean nothing more than a glorified calculator and an expensive toy until it could have a software of some sort.
Altair 8800 with 8 inch floppy disk system
(Source- en.wikipedia.org)
Act-2
Scene-2: Massachusetts
A 22 year old engineer in Boston, rushes with a print of the January 1975 edition of Popular Electronics magazine with Altair 8800 on its cover, to show to his 19 year old friend from high-school. Paul Allen was employed with Honeywell at that time and Bill Gates was an undergrad at Harvard. They contacted Ed asking if he was interested in buying their BASIC interpreter. They claimed they could fit a functional version of the BASIC interpreter onto the tiny Altair memory. Incredulous as it sounded, Ed was still ready to give the underdog a shot and asked Paul to fly over to Albuquerque for a demo.
Of course the truth was that, Paul and Bill did not have a BASIC interpreter built yet. Frantically, they bought computer time on a PDP-10 so that Paul could write an Altair emulator, to test out their interpreter. Paul finished the bootstrap code (the part that helps load the program onto the memory) for Altair BASIC on the flight to Albuquerque, not really sure if their 4K footprint code will work on the real thing.
Paul Allen and Bill Gates
(Source- http://www.geekwire.com)
It did! Gates and Allen decided that it was going to be now or never. Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard and the pair relocated to Albuquerque where they started a computer company called Micro-Soft. Eventually they would shift base to Redmond and become the world’s largest software maker in terms of revenue.
Act-3
Scene-1: Silicon Valley
Being the early bird augured well for Intel and Microsoft, but not so for MITS. The company soon found itself in troubled waters once again, struggling to differentiate itself from imitators that were spawning all around. Competing in this chaos, and the sheer monotony of cranking the wheel were not the kind of things that excited Ed. He sold MITS in 1977 and returned to rural Georgia where he bought a farmland.
The year 1977 would also see the advent of first highly successful mass-produced 8-bit home computer designed by a company named after a fruit, founded by two college dropouts. Playing the survival game in the nascent PC industry required a different kind of genius- raw energy, intensity, a passionate and an almost megalomaniacal devotion to perfection- Steven Paul Jobs possessed these traits in abundance.
Steve Jobs with Apple II
(Source- http://www.edibleapple.com )
Following the success of Apple II, Steve Jobs would set out on his quest to make personal computing an integral part of his personal legacy. In his attempt to rally the entire personal computing industry behind him, he would get himself exiled from Apple. The prodigal son would then return to turn Apple around from near- bankruptcy into the world’s most valuable company in history (achieved less than a year after his death).
A Footnote
So, what happened to the seminal figure whose life was intricately intertwined with these three industry stalwarts. Ed Roberts would go on to follow his dream, and retrain himself as a physician, becoming a medical doctor at the age of 45. Ed was the classic tinkerer-entrepreneur who started a company, just so he could build what he wanted for himself in the first place and in the process would fill the void for others as well. To state that Ed was any less of a success compared to the other three, would be to completely miss the point.
It requires courage to pursue what you love to do and what really excites you, instead of ambling along doing what you’re expected to do. The human lifetime is rather short to be faithfully fulfilling every stereotype hoisted on you by others who don’t have a stake in what you consider as a life well-lived. History is replete with stories where individual prosperity is not always in direct proportionality to one’s contribution to society. Fame is crucial only insofar as it serves a platform to influence the lives of others for the better. Sooner or later, every hero fades into obscurity, if not already victimized by distortion of our collective memory.
Judging Ed’s life on the metrics of personal happiness and social impact, it would be fair to say that Ed remained honest to his passions and chose intellectual freedom over a shot at greater personal glory, while playing a crucial role in the story of how computing became personal and ubiquitous.
One can well imagine a porky Ed fading into the horizon to the tune of Sinatra’s “My Way”!
Ed Roberts with Altair 8800
(Source- http://www.digitaltrends.com)
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