 Coming up on DTNS should software be protected the Queen of England is on the cutting edge of tech and a new era in Aeronautics presages a great era in flight. It's the biggest tech stories of this the year of our Lord 1976 This is the Daily Tech news show best of 1976 here celebrating the bice-antennial in Greenville, Illinois. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Santa Cruz I'm Sarah Lane And I'm the show's producer Roger Chang Let's look back at the top tech stories of 1976 some of us may be time travelers and Occasionally show knowledge that we possibly shouldn't have just bear with us Microsoft's Bill Gates wrote an open letter to hobbyists first published back in February of 1976 in the homebrew computer club newsletter in Mountain View, California It was also published in the micro eight Computer user group newsletter as well as computer notes mini computer news people's computer company and radio electronics number five The letter was in response to users Copying code to implement basic on the myths 680 b which is based on Motorola's 6800 processor of course We all know hardware has to be paid for but software is just something you put into the hardware you can just copy it and Gates objects to this because It means that he and his friends are selling fewer quote-unquote copies of their version of basic Which Gates argues costs money to develop? He also argues that this prevents good software from being written because there's no financial incentive for people to Sink in the investment to write good software Gates asked people to voluntarily pay for the software that they have copied Good luck with that and gave out the company's New Mexico address for such purpose as well as welcoming suggestions or comments Which I thought was nice Gates wrote quote Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and they'll use the hobby market with good software. Oh Wow Where do we start with the idea of in 1976? People being like hold on so somebody could just like steal Software that isn't right. They should they should not do that Bill Gates obviously doesn't understand the hobbyist world. He's living in or perhaps He just he does understand it and is trying to bully people into paying for something. That's free software is free in 1976 the idea You could hold software You could somehow well, I don't know where you're getting this I I would like to interject That I would like to draw an analogy if I may You are allowed to write on a blank piece of paper any sort of letter correspondence piece of fiction or or perhaps an observation and Submit it and hand it out free to anyone that would be willing to read it. However, we offer we also have authors reporters People who also use the same system in order to jot down their thoughts and yet they Demand some level of compensation for a journalist is to be paid by a newspaper For an author's to be paid for their book by their publisher. I mean, I is it any different I Get where you're coming from Roger But traditionally software is just the thing that makes the hardware run and you're taking away my right To run it the way I want because maybe the way I want to run the software is similar to someone else I don't want to get into a George Harrison situation Where I'm getting sued by the chiffons because my sweet Lord is similar to he's so fine I don't want that to apply to software I want software to be like a recipe if I have a recipe for a great mushroom casserole I'm not going to get sued by the Campbell's company for passing that along recipes are free Anybody can make them because everybody cooks same with software. Everybody writes software You can't say my recipe for executing instructions on the chip is is somehow Protected that's ridiculous Yeah, but like if you had a player piano Would you not play for the music scroll that would be needed for it to play the music or do you think all that music? That's been been been pre a pre-processed be allowed Free access by anyone who wants it without payment or compensation It's it's whether do we want software to be treated as as a as music or as as food That's that's really pretty much what it comes down to Turns out Tom you have to pay for both No, you don't no one Six no one pays for software in 1976. Why do you think Bill Gates had a right letter? It's hard for me to I'm like wait no, we're in 1910 got it got it Well speaking of 1976 a little thing happened on the way to the theater Homebrew computer club member Steve Wozniak and his partner Steve Jobs Took the world by storm with an affordable adaptable open micro computer called the Apple for six hundred sixty six dollars and sixty six cents ha ha Offered a video terminal and eight kilobytes of RAM on a single PC card Hey, how about that the company emphasized that it's version of basic is free and is stated that Quote our philosophy is provide software for our machines free or at minimal cost See Apple gets it Steve Wozniak gets it the software isn't where you make the money People will write software. They'll want to write software for their machines. This isn't a genius mini computer though this is You know a very efficient board that Wozniak has made here. That's it's it's really incredible I'm impressed because as we all know coming from the Altair and another hobbyist kits This this goes some way to reducing the the gap between the everyman and the enthusiast who prefers to work on their own electronics and has to know how the tool set and frankly the time to put one of these Together I think in the future. We might see more of these and perhaps a completed model From you know a large retail like a Montgomery wards or a JC pennies or even a Macy's I Yeah, I think what I love about this is all you need is the case really You know and Apple's talking about possibly offer offering a second version of its computer That that would include the case. Can you imagine how accessible that would be if you know everyone not just us But everybody could just pick up a computer plug it in and start going I think I think I'm most impressed by the included video terminal. I mean like having Some form of video output instead of just outputting straight to a printer Or or heaven forbid even just like a punch card I think is is pretty impressive considering The price that they're asking me and that's that's relatively cheap. I mean, I mean my my my mom's my mom's bank Had to put down more than two million dollars Is like nothing for your mom's bank had to put down two million dollars to pay for to pay for a mini computer that did the Wow, I mean she she had to spend an entire course at The University of San Francisco to learn how to program it on punch cards. I have stacks of them at home Wow It's a most impressive feet Imagine Sarah though if you didn't have to do that if you could just buy a computer already in a case You don't have to do any assembly even sound great like your television I don't want that hassle and and it comes with basic. How crazy is that? You don't need to understand how the chip works. You have a very easy to use $66 and 66 cents you have a very you have a very easy human understandable Programming language basic. I mean it says forgive the pun is basic as you can get and that price is only gonna come down Right. I mean that that sure it seems like a lot in 1976 I'm guessing an Apple computer in ten years will cost you like a hundred bucks. I Well, you know, we we are in a period of high inflation. So maybe 300 bucks. Sure. Yeah, I mean 76, you know kind of crazy year by Centennial after all You know, who knows who knows? All right Electronic mail. I know most of you out there have heard of it But it's a perk that's available to people who work in academic institutions military institutions people who have access to Arpanet and know how to work the system But that may be changing back in March while visiting the Royal Signals and Radar establishment in Malvern, England Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II sent an electronic mail of her own The Royal Signals and Radar establishment had just implemented electronic mail And the Queen becomes the first head of state to send electronic mail Of course one of the first people to send it. There's not that many people using it She was identified on the system as HME to her Majesty Elizabeth II The Queen announced a new language available on the system in her electronic mail which read This message to all Arpanet users Announces the availability on Arpanet of the Coral 66 compiler Provided by the GEC 4080 computer at the Royal Signals and Radar establishment Malvern, England Coral 66 Is the standard real-time high-level language adopted by the Ministry of Defense? I love how you were like kind of doing her voice even though I didn't want to She didn't actually write this I Felt the pinky finger with the teacup I mean can you this this I think signals this is honestly like okay, I I know we're I Know we're supposed to be in 1976. So like let's say I'm in 1976 at this point. Yeah, no, we are we totally are I mean that's Gerald Ford feels very I don't know forward thinking on the part of the The Queen's yeah, the Queen the Queen is very tech forward It's not the first You could you could write this off especially because she was obviously sending a pre-prepared message You could write this off. It's like oh they brought her in told her push a bunch She probably didn't even know what was going on. She knew what was going on In fact, I'll predict Sarah in the future. She'll have something called an iPod mini of her own But no, she she historically and I imagine it will continue that way is very interested in in technology So even if she didn't compose the message very clearly I bet she she was curious and asked questions about how it all worked and and was very very into it I mean in in all honesty for you know, a lot of people who are like email. I I don't know I heard about in the mid 90s kind of thing. This is I mean This is pretty this pretty major. I think about this in 1976 This is something that that that was happening that sure the consumer market wasn't you know It wasn't available to to them, but it but it but it already existed and it Had been had been going for some time and this helps popularize it right this helps get more people to understand It was a thing that could happen. What I find interesting is that the The the British monarchy is so forward-looking. I mean, it's it's not just the electronic mail that that's so impressive Just through the ages they've adopted a lot of new technologies like the telephone They did and and a long though tell it television But I mean they they were the things that weren't just treated as mere curiosities But as things that definitely have some sort of future that could be implemented Not just within with the realm of like aristocracy or anything like that But you know a usable technology for the benefit of the nation If you have a thought about something that we're talking about on the show drop us a letter Of course, we're at 1187. Oh Santa Monica Boulevard number one oh six five five three Los Angeles, California 9 to below two five or if you have access to electronic mail you can use that feedback at daily tech news show dot-com Oh Tom who has that I know it's maybe this episode Sarah will last Long into the future past the year 2000 and be heard by people who think of a electronic mail It's just a regular part of their everyday lives 1976 big advances in not just aeronautics, but aerospace so let's start with space The first of NASA's two unmanned spacecraft sent to Mars landed on July 20th The Viking one sent back photos of the Martian surface. The lander has two cameras three analyses from metabolism growth or photosynthesis a grass chromatograph mass spectrometer an x-ray fluorescence spectrometer pressure temperature and wind velocity sensors a Three-axis seismometer a magnet on a sampler observed by the cameras and various engineering sensors If there's someone walking around on Mars the Viking one is gonna find them and let us know they're there While the moon landing program is on pause for now Visits may become easier and more frequent thanks to the space shuttle This is a reusable space craft that can head off to orbit and then land back on earth to fly again It was unveiled September 17th and the prototype has been named the Enterprise after the famous science fiction vessel in the TV show Star Trek they were gonna name it the Constitution But Star Trek fans still exist and wrote in to convince NASA to name it the Enterprise In fact the cast and producer of Star Trek were on hand for the unveiling The Enterprise is a prototype that will be used to test out all the systems to make sure it's space worthy Before other shuttles are built and launched into orbit So while we wait for shuttles to begin taking us frequently to space and back We'll be able to get around the world even faster right here on earth Thanks to a supersonic jet the Concorde Launched its first commercial flight January 21st from Heathrow making it to London making it from London to New York in two hours and 52 minutes quite a bit shorter than the weeks it used to take our parents on a ship not that long ago goodness gracious Hi hours 52 minutes. Are you kidding me? I? I'm gonna say like the The the the unmanned spacecraft to Mars is huge I mean until you know until then we had to live with brave Bradbury books Ray bad Bradbury books Or one of those or one of those or you know like your your old red Red Planet movies. I think it's kind of cool. I mean I can't wait to see when we get to see I mean kid. Do you think they'll be like creatures and stuff though catch? Well, I mean listen. It's 1976 I mean by I don't know let's let's get crazy and say like the year 2000 Obviously, we'll all be living on Mars. Well, right. We are we have sent a an unmanned spacecraft to Mars. We're about to have frequent shuttles to The moon and back basically We'll be able to fly here on earth. I mean yeah thousand two hours and fifty two minutes will be though It'll be like a half hour. You'll you'll be able to just pop over from New York to London in a half hour You'll be able to take a shuttle the shuttle to the moon will take two hours and fifty two minutes And they'll probably be people for headed to Mars and they're probably like a cool like place to like You know like like a like a cool restaurant on Mars. This is literally less than 10 years past the the release of 2001 in the In the motion 2001 a space Odyssey is the way I I will predict that the movie 2001 a space Odyssey will look dated by the year 2001 you'll look at it and think oh my gosh That we're way past that. Yeah, like can you imagine? No, but actually thought was How can you imagine I mean that was so cutting-edge like what will it look like I mean it's like my mind struggles to conceive of What wondrous things would actually take its place? Yeah, well, we'll have we'll have incredibly fast flights Getting around the planet Earth will be nothing. You'll be able to go everywhere Well, we'll be we'll be 30 30 minutes will be colonized in the moon Space shuttles flying us back and forth and we'll we'll be headed to Mars. Yeah All right, Sarah, what do we got next? Well You know kind of come keeping with the with the theme we knew what was coming Happening at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and that was the first cray computer Oh, yes, the first great computer the cray one in staults not the first super computer But very compact relatively affordable seemed pretty great to a lot of folks who were Interested at the time even had a ring of benches around the outside for workers to sit on it while using it That's how big the cray was and while smaller not lesser in fact faster and it's much larger Then then it's much larger brethren the systems improved the performance of math operations and Arranging memory and registers to quickly perform single operations on a set of data Not the first to do it is the cray but the first to do it in a way that didn't limit performance Very important there. How long can it be before every business can afford the price and room to have a super computer in the back room? I can't imagine that you put this news together with the Apple Development and you get an idea that in the future Maybe computers are in every place, you know restaurants accountants And those will have cray like things I bet they'll get smaller and smaller and and then Apple type things for free for the home and everybody sending electronic mail back and forth This is supposedly according to according to the the brochures this machine will be a capable of processing 80 Will be capable of running at 80 megahertz Also like megahertz You know you mentioned wishers Imagine well imagine if you will Being back in the like how do you share news of this like great new super computer? brochures Where where do they go? Like I don't know the you know they get dropped on people's trade shows. Yeah Yeah, yeah sales calls trade shows But like what are you you have to really want to know about this to know about it I mean like is this is this something just for the universities and research institutions and government agencies? Oh, this is much more affordable, but like how do we how do we how do we harness this power? I mean 80 megahertz just just so you know that Apple we were glowing over is less less than a single megahertz So it would take more than 80 of those need 80 apples plus to and it wouldn't still wouldn't be the equivalent of this processor that This is a 64-bit processor. I mean right now. We're working with eight bits and we still don't know what to do with it Also, they're comfy. Have you ever sat on one? I? Have not I I hope to see one Part of this is like listen when you have to like hang out with your super computer for a while Yeah, you can you know sit on the side and kind of be comfortable while doing yeah when you're when you're you're reading the friggin Manual you can you can just sit outside and be like all right. I'm gonna confess something Tom Computer has has a cool seat. I I I have a confession to make I secretly want to see if you can make some sort of game on this device and what it would look like I mean right now seems like a frivolous use of Come on right now. We have space war which is a grand game and and it's so much fun Certainly, but certainly long ain't bad either certainly Can you imagine the number of people that could be able to to access this machine to play a very immersive game? Imagine why would you what who would let people? Access their super computer to play a game what what I'm telling you Tom is I think the future will be where people feel entertained as they use this technology because that will Coerce or at least indulge them to to use it more No, you know, I think they'll stay at the pinball arcade myself I don't see this sort of thing being wasted on on frivolous games. Yeah This is this is for serious use. It's it's for science for science for business For accounting spreadsheets. Yeah, could be adapted into things like this Yeah, you wouldn't have having them Like need some sort of like I don't know a great big ol computer to do things Let me let me leave you with this thought if you had a machine this powerful You could create a simulation of a virtual world perhaps But in that in essence, isn't that kind of a game like? Reality as well, and I mean the same way that space war would replicate on a very abstract level Yeah, I suppose maybe a small percentage might do that But I I can't imagine it turning into an industry I mean, I'm yeah, like imagine the general public caring about stuff like this, right Yeah, I suppose you're right. I suppose you're right And like in like even like, you know, who's who's got like an office room where they're gonna put a computer in there and Make it like the office room. Yeah, you don't want your den is a is a place where you you know escape from the world Right. Yeah, I mean nobody's gonna do that. It's kind of crazy like the kids won't care. No, no, they're gonna be outside playing Slipping slide playing ya lawn darts. Yeah All right, I think we could we could we could let down what little pretense we have left that it's 1976 And and give people a little cut of an overview from okay, we've traveled in time to 2021 I Think the thing that surprised me and dis and depressed me the most in preparing the show was the aeronautics section The one where it's like man, I forgot I remember all of these stories I was six years old and I remember looking at the viking Images on the news and thinking oh my gosh, that's mars. That's actual mars I remember the space shuttle enterprise flying on the back of an american airlines jet For its test run and thinking we're just gonna be flying up in a space. It's like an airplane everybody'll be able to get on one and the concord is the most depressing one because We don't even have the concord anymore. Like they retired it We this we can't go two hours and 52 minutes from he throw uh to to jfk anymore. Yeah, like like That sounds great We're not doing that. Well in 2021 what I find most remarkable is kind of the optimistic tone of all these news stories and not just the way not the way they were written but just the way People looked at things as the very unoptimistic time. Remember this is the middle of of the of the ford administration in the u.s. Which was after nixon resigned Trust in government. You think it's low now It was real low rampant inflation stagflation And you know, there's gonna be a coming gas crisis which people gas lines all of that So, I mean there were a lot of things to look forward to and I remember as a child There was a little after the the the enterprise when they launched of columbia, which was the first Space going special when and go to space We took an entire hour out of my first grade class to watch it on the tv And our teacher kept telling us this is a huge moment in history This is akin to like man landing on the moon Remember this because it will be something you'll see on a regular basis And it was up until the last shuttle mission at the turn of the 20th century and then things kind of fell into a plateau, but The tone is so much promise so much optimism And it is it is very remarkable, especially from the time period it came from Also, I was trying to capture that that feeling sarah Of of people in 1976 that that's it's charging for software bill gates was a nut People thought bill gates was a greedy nut when he wrote this letter And it's it's just so difficult To put yourself in that mindset in the world if we live in now or it's like no you piracy is Everybody agrees piracy is bad. Even people who do piracy know they're sneaking around doing something. It was Well that way and and and just like the the idea that somebody who's like listen I know what i'm doing And you can't you know copy this that's not right And that that still isn't right and there are a lot of lawsuits, uh, you know every day about that sort of thing but the fact that There there weren't really many software, uh, you know, I don't know they there wasn't a lot of software programs to Uh copy at the time well and what there was was freely traded People would you would you would just give people like oh you're using an altair here take my program This is what I worked on it. You can use it It was that culture that bill gates waited into at this open letter. He was there was no law Around it at the time and he was trying to convince people like just don't do it Well, I mean don't give my stuff around you can give your stuff around I guess if you want but i'm trying to build a business over here There was there was a very many a lawyer was born Well, there was a very permissive culture if you went to any I went to my cousin's university campus And it was a thing like you went to the uh software lab You went into the computer lab and that was a thing like people would just have blanks It would come in zico. I need to to run this on the other end of campus or whatever Because at the time remember home computers were still a very small niche and very expensive thing And so most people it wasn't like copying like a movie or or uh music Where you could just take it home you you had to go to another part of the campus or a corporation and And people I brought up the recipe the cooking thing because that's how people felt in 76 And and then for years afterwards, which is like no this is like You know, maybe if I came up with a really clever piece of software I'd protect it like a secret recipe like grandma did But I'm not going to like stop most people like yeah, yeah, sure I can give you my recipe for making the computer do the thing Like it was just a whole different way and that's where that piracy clash in the 90s came from as you you had that We still had that mindset clashing with the bill gates mindset, which is like I want to do it differently Let me lay out the reasons why it should be done the way I'm talking about And and that fizzled out I think in during the dot-com era and now everybody's like, oh, yeah No software should be protected. It's just a matter of how much and You know, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, don't steal my software, bro unless it's open source We've kind of cordoned off all of the hobbyist Mentality into the open source area. Well, if you're open source, okay Then you can give your software away and that's that's for you all The rest of the business world lives on that was something that had to be like that wasn't that wasn't a thing No, because you know, you had you had to sort of figure out like who kind of Feels like software should be shared amongst us all. Okay open source community. Great Open source was the default in 76 They wouldn't have understood the idea of open source because they're like, well, yeah, all all Source code is open You're like Anyway Also the queen I mean, I had to shove in the iPod thing there because I don't know if she had other examples. There probably are before 76 but but she definitely is tech forward and has always been so Um, I mean, it's definitely surprised. It surprised me with the more I learned back like, you know A couple of decades ago learning about like, you know, how the royal house of Windsor or whatever works I have actually sat on a cray. Uh, I had a uh, the these guys down in Almost near Santa Cruz actually The computer barn or the computer barn had a cray That they let me they sit down and it was it was padded. It was very nice. And that was that was I love the idea of like being like, I just want to be near you computer The idea was the computer was also furniture. So you wouldn't have to like, you know, right? It's going to take up anywhere else. Make it usable. Yeah. Yeah What I what I keep forgetting is that apple didn't start out from a business Computer like the rest of like even combo was was a computer was a business oriented You know technology company and there's a couple of guys like, yeah, you know during their spare time We cobbled this together and then we're going to build a business out Wasniac created a better hobbyist computer and jobs was like, I can help you sell that And and jobs new new technology. I'm not trying to downplay his his tech specs But it the wasniac was the genius who built it jobs was the genius who knew how to sell it I knew how to sell it to other hobbyists because he wasn't selling it to businesses at first That came later He was a marketing guy, but he also understood the way people used things Like or he wasn't he was a he was a tech guy Not just a marketing guy, but you're right that his his genius was in knowing how people use things for sure Well, folks, we want you to be like the queen send us an electronic mail our electronic mail address Is feedback at daily tech news show.com. We hope you're all having great holidays We'll be back with live episodes coming up after the first of january So come back and see us then Indeed and thank you for looking back on the big stories of the year 1976 y'all What a time to be alive. I had just been born I can't wait to see what happens in 1977 and we'll do that again next year We'll be covering it all at daily tech news show.com just as soon as they make the domain name system really widespread I don't want to hold my breath on that Probably coming to yous