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169.
THE FIRST WEST COAST COMPUTER FAIRE: A Conference & Exposition on Personal & Home Computers.
Palo Alto, CA: Computer Faire, Inc., 1977. First edition. 4to. Stiff yellow printed wrps., 334pp. + 18pp. ads. Illustrated with photographs, diagrams and drawings. Edited by Jim C. Warren.
The conference proceedings from the first West Coast Computer Faire, held in the Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, April 15-17, 1977, an event since regarded as the birth of the personal computer industry. According to co-organiser Jim Warren, a veteran of La Honda's acid and nudist bohemian scene and founding editor of Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia, it was also viewed by hardware hackers as "an event comparable to Woodstock… both a cultural vindication and a signal that the movement had gotten so big that it no longer belonged to its progenitors." The Faire saw the debut of both the Commodore PET, presented by Chuck Peddle, and the Apple II, presented by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers.
Writing in the book's preface, Warren states that "From the outset, one of the major goals of the Computer Faire was to produce these Conference Proceedings", adding that "By publishing this document, we allow the entire community of individuals interested in personal computing to share the massive collection of information - much of it involving state-of-the-art developments - that was presented in the Faire's Conference Program."
Under a variety of headings - 'People & Computers', 'Computer Art Systems', 'Music & Computers', 'Electronic Mail', 'Homebrew Hardware' and so on - its contents include papers by, among many others, Henry Tropp, Ted Nelson (see item #149), Frederik Pohl, John H. Whitney, Marc LeBrun, and Larry Tesler (of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, who, like Warren, had also taught at the Midpeninsula Free University). Each entry was selected by a committee composed of editors from People's Computer Company, CoEvolution Quarterly, Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter, and Dr. Dobb's Journal. Advertisers include BYTE (item #159), which covered the Faire in its July 1977 issue; Interface Age Magazine; Mini-Micro Systems magazine; Computer Music Journal; and People's Computers of Menlo Park. A detailed listing of the commercial exhibitors at the Faire is provided in the final three pages, among them Apple Computer of Cupertino, which had been incorporated only four months earlier.
Wrappers show minor signs of use, o/w a Near Fine copy of a scarce item documenting a landmark moment in the history of personal computing.
