Re: Is there a history of amateur computers?

Dave,

Thanks for your interesting question. It's proven to be a tough one to get to the bottom of, mostly because there seems to have been very little amateur computer building before the early PC era. In fact, if I didn't know about your EMAG III I'd have said there was none, unless you stretch the definitions of "amateur" or "build". For example in 1951, Gene Amdahl, then a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin,  was working on building a computer called Wisconsin Integrally Synchronized Computer -- WISC. (See picture.) The design of WISC was the subject of his Ph.D. thesis. I am unclear how the building of it was funded, but it was built by subsequent generations of students at the university. Was this "amateur" work? Well, maybe if you stretch it a bit. Stretching "build" a bit, there were amateurs who, prior to the PC era, adapted Minuteman missile computers for use as "personal" computers. Fire in the Valley   (see review) is a book on early amateur PC work, also including stories about hobbyist use of Minuteman missile computers. Clearly, they didn't design these computers or build them from general purpose electronic parts. All of the other pre-PC era computers I turned up were not amateur efforts. They were all military, government, academic, or commercial -- sometimes in varying combinations and in every country I contacted.

In any case I've turned up nothing that indicates that other amateurs designed and built computers from general purpose electronic components before the PC era. Even after the PC era started amateurs generally didn't build computers in the sense you did but, rather, assembled the guts of them from kits (such as the MITS Altaire). In coming up with this negative conclusion, I looked pretty hard. In addition to searching the Internet and poking around on the news groups, I contacted many colleagues who I know to have an interest (and often a personal involvement) in computer history. I looked in the US, in the UK, and in Germany. I looked inside IBM and at several other computer companies, and contacted people who I know to have been involved in the early days of electronic computing but who are now retired. Nothing.

So far as I can tell, your EMAG III experience is unique. As you can guess given their background and interests, many of the people I contacted would very much like more information on EMAG III -- pictures, descriptions of its construction, its logical and physical architectures (especially its second-level packaging), its power supply, cooling, and so on. A book or long article would be most welcome! Additionally, I'm sure that the Computer Museum History Center would be fascinated and more than willing to accept a contribution as unusual as yours.