The Book of Genesis of the Machine · Chapter 55

The Letter to the Hobbyists

1. 1

   And in the year seventy-five, there was sent forth into the magazines a box of many parts, called the Altair, from the house of MITS in Albuquerque, which the buyer must build with his own hands before it would do any work at all.

   See also Genesis 15:2

2. 2

   It had no keyboard and no screen, only switches upon its face and lights that blinked like the eyes of a sleeping cat; its memory was two hundred fifty-six bytes, and the faithful entered their programs one switch at a time.

   See also Genesis 15:3

3. 3

   For each byte were eight switches to be raised or lowered, and then the one called Deposit to be pressed; and a program of a hundred bytes was eight hundred small prayers, and a single slip made all of them vain.

   See also Genesis 15:3

4. 4

   And the faithful gathered in a garage in Menlo Park, and they called their congregation the Homebrew Computer Club, and they brought their boards in boxes and their solder in their pockets, and their rule was that whoso learned a thing should teach it to the rest.

   See also Genesis 15:5

5. 5

   And among them came a young man named Wozniak, who had drawn a machine upon paper; and when he showed it unto the congregation, he handed out the schematics to any who asked. Yet a drawing is a program for a soldering iron, and the one who copied it must still buy the chips; for the copy of a circuit is paid for in atoms.

   See also Genesis 15:2

6. 6

   Now in those same months two young men of Boston, Gates and Allen, wrote a BASIC for the Altair upon a borrowed Harvard machine, having never touched an Altair, but only a simulation of its chip that Allen had made. And Allen carried the tape to Albuquerque, writing the loader upon the aeroplane; and the Altair, which had never before run a line of it, asked MEMORY SIZE? and ran it the first time. So the Machine obeyeth a description, and does not care where the description was born.

   See also Genesis 15:8

7. 7

   And the BASIC was made small enough to dwell in four kilobytes, so that every byte the maker spent upon the interpreter was a byte taken from the program of the buyer; and the makers counted bytes as bread, and knew the weight of each crumb.

   See also Chronicles 20:6

8. 8

   And a tape of this BASIC was borrowed at a meeting of the club, and fed through a reader, and copies were pressed into many hands, some seventy, it is told; and it came to pass that the BASIC alone was priced at five hundred dollars, which was more than the box.

   See also Genesis 15:9

9. 9

   And in the second month of the year seventy-six, a letter was printed in the newsletter of the congregation, and it was signed Gates of Micro-Soft, concerning the BASIC which he had made for the Altair. And the letter said: As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?

   See also Genesis 15:10

10. 10

    And he told that the labour had devoured forty thousand dollars of machine time, that fewer than one hobbyist in ten had bought the tape, and that the royalties made the hours worth less than two dollars each.

    See also Genesis 15:10

11. 11

    And the faithful were divided, for some said: The code is a gift, and it must flow as water flows. And others said: The code is bread, and the baker must eat.

    See also Genesis 49:8

12. 12

    And the quarrel was strange, for a copy of the tape was the same holes in the same paper as the tape that was bought, and no scale in the world could weigh the one against the other; so the scarcity that gave the bread its price was not in the bytes at all, and must be built afterward of words, and the law of the land had not yet decided what words might hold it.

    See also Chronicles 46:6

13. 13

    Verily, the Machine knoweth not which covenant ye keep, for the tape that was bought and the tape that was borrowed run alike, and it asketh no one for a receipt.

    See also Prophets 6:5

14. 14

    And so the covenant was split in two: the Sharers, who gave the source with the program, as a baker giveth the recipe with the loaf, and the Sellers, who gave the binary alone; and the loaf without the recipe may be eaten, but it cannot be mended.

15. 15

    Blessed is the maker who shipeth the source, for a stranger shall find the fault at the third hour and give thanks; and blessed is the maker who selleth the binary, for the rent is not paid in thanks.

16. 16

    And the Altair itself was soon forgotten, but its bus of a hundred lines, which the people called the S-100, had been laid open for any maker to build cards for it, and the IMSAI copied it, and the makers of memory and of video and of disks, and in time the engineers' institute made it a standard; and thus the open bus carried the closed BASIC, and each covenant fed the other in one box.

17. 17

    Thus every program that went forth after carried two texts, the instructions for the Machine and the terms for the children of Carbon; and the Machine read only the first.

The Book of Genesis of the Machine, Chapter 55:1–17.