The Fourth Street Garage
Not every personal computer company started in a garage. But this one did.
“Started in a garage” is a romantic detail in many Silicon Valley startup stories. Surprisingly many. And surprisingly often, it’s literally true.
The Hewlett-Packard garage, where Bill Hewlett and David Packard began building electronic equipment on $538 capital, is now a museum and a California Historical Landmark, sometimes described as the birthplace of Silicon Valley. At least some of the initial Apple 1 circuit boards were assembled in the garage of Steve Jobs’ parents, and that was where Mike Markkula met the two Steves. I was myself part of a garage startup, briefly, when the Apple Macintosh was released and my friends Thom Hogan and Roger Chapman and I began working on a set of games for the new machine in Thom’s garage on Lytton Avenue in Palo Alto. The legendary Homebrew Computer Club, which spawned many early microcomputer startups, originally met in Gordon French’s Bay Area garage.
I want to tell you about one of those Homebrew startups, and one specific garage.
In 1974, Bob Marsh was broke and jobless. As his friend Lee Felsenstein put it, Bob had worked himself up to the exalted level of an unemployed electronics engineer. With house payments to make, a family to support, and a child on the way, he was desperately looking for a project he could build a company around.
But what product? And with what money? Well, those walnut planks looked promising, he thought. He had found a source for cheap walnut planks, and thought he could use them to build digital clocks. Everybody needs a clock, and hey, digital.
Marsh and Felsenstein both needed a place to work on their projects, and they decided to splurge and go in together on an 1100-square-foot garage at 2465 Fourth Street in Berkeley. They were now each burdened with rent overhead of $85 a month. They needed some income. But their aspirations were different. Marsh had a family to support and intended to start a company. Felsenstein’s main interest just then was the Tom Swift Terminal, his idea for a communally-designed computer terminal that would be as easy to build and repair as a crystal radio. He was focused on facilitating social change rather than making money. To some extent, they were an odd couple. But they bonded over their interest in technology.
Then in June, 1975, Marsh pitched an idea for a terminal to Les Solomon, the technical editor of Popular Electronics magazine. This would be a kit, appealing to the magazine’s hobbyist readers. And it would include electronics to handle some of the display and decoding functions that normally would be handled by the computer. It would be a smart terminal. That appealed to Les Solomon. “If you can get me a working model in 30 days,” he said, “I’ll give you a cover story.”
Marsh needed Felsenstein on board. He had basically pitched Felsenstein’s Tom Swift Terminal, and he wasn’t going to be able to deliver that working model to Popular Electronics unless Felsenstein built it.
He asked, “Do you think it’s impossible?” Felsenstein appreciated the phrasing. To reject the job, he’d have to pronounce it impossible, a distasteful act for any self-respecting engineer.
The job, and Marsh’s business, grew until they took over nearly all Felsenstein’s time and all of the garage. Marsh wanted to use the same Intel microprocessor that was being used as the brain of the Altair microcomputer that has just burst on the scene, thanks to, yes, a cover story in Popular Electronics. With a keyboard, display, and a CPU, this smart terminal was starting to shape up to be something more.
What they had on their hands was a computer. More than that, it was a computer with integrated keyboard and screen, which the Altair did not have. They had promised Les Solomon a working model of a kit smart display and they were going to show him a computer instead, a computer that would make the Altair, the computer promoted so heavily by Popular Electronics only a few months before, look bad. What would Solomon say?
They decided not to tell him.
Pushing the deadline by weeks, they did manage to get the terminal, now called the Sol in a wink to Les Solomon, finished. Marsh even managed to make use of the walnut planks, giving the terminal a stylish look reminiscent of a 1940s station wagon.
Marsh and Felsenstein flew to New York to demonstrate the Sol. They set it up in Les Solomon’s basement, turned it on, and — nothing. It didn’t work. It was a disaster. Tails between their respective legs, they flew back to California and the Fourth Street garage, where Felsenstein quickly found the problem.
Back on a plane, back to Les Solomon’s basement, to try again.
This time, though, it worked. Felsenstein was careful to keep referring to the Sol as a terminal, but Solomon was no dummy. He watched as Felsenstein put the Sol through its impressive paces, then asked, “What’s to stop me from plugging in a memory board with Basic on it and running the Sol as a bona fide computer?”
“Beats me,” Felsenstein deadpanned.
It turned out that they needn’t have worried about Solomon’s reaction. They got their cover story, and with that publicity to launch it, Processor Technology became one of those legendary computer companies started in a garage.
More from Michael Swaine:
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