This is an 8" floppy that would hold 128k bytes. Dad used a lot of these in the early days...

It was on this day in 1975 that the Homebrew Computer Club first met. It turned out to be an enormously influential hobby club: its existence made possible the personal computer. At the time, computers were not for personal use or owned by individuals. For one thing, they were gigantic in size-- a computer easily took up an entire room. And they were very expensive, costing about a million dollars each. Not even computer engineers or programmers who made a living working on computers had access to their own personal computers. But many of these tech-minded people wanted to build personal computers for fun, to use at home. And they decided to start a hobbyist club to trade circuit-boards and information and share enthusiasm. The first of its kind, the Homebrew Computer Club first met 36 years ago today — in somebody's home garage in the Silicon Valley.

Among the early members: high school friends Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who designed the Apple I and II to bring down to the club to show it off, as well as Lee Felsentein and Adam Osborne, who would later create the first mass-produced portable computer, the Osborne 1. Other legendary figures in the computer world, including Bob Marsh, George Morrow, Jerry Lawson, and John Draper, were Homebrew members.

Less than five years later Dad bought his first computer. It was shortly after we moved to Gilford in 1979. It was then that he started consulting for Alphatype. That first computer cost $30,000. And, as they say, the rest is history.