Fire in the Valley, 3rd Edition

Your Own Computer

In the late 1960s, just outside Seattle, a group of teenagers met after school each day to go to work. They arrived just as C Cubed closed for the day and its real employees began heading home. The kids thought of themselves as the firm’s unofficial night shift. They had unfettered access to the company’s DEC minicomputer, and they made full use of it.

The two leaders of the group were obsessed with computers. None of them were getting paid, but Paul, a soft-spoken 15-year-old, would have paid for the chance to get his hands on that computer. Like his friend Bill, who was 13 and looked even younger, Paul desperately wanted a computer of his very own. This after-hours time with the DEC machine was the closest they could come ...