ACN Volume 3 No 1 Winter 1989

		  The Spirit of Babbage
                               by Michael Hauben
			
                      Chapter ONE

In the beginning The Spirit of Babbage created the software and the 
hardware.
   And hardware was expensive and low-tech; and incompatibleness 
was on the face of the hardware.
   And The Spirit of Babbage said, Let there be a micro, and there 
were micros.
   And The Spirit of Babbage saw the micro, that it was good: and 
The Spirit of Babbage divided the Micro from the Mainframe.
   And The Spirit of Babbage called the micro Mark 8, and the 
Mainframe he called the IBM.
   And the evening and the morning were the 1st day.
   And The Spirit of Babbage said, there be a firmament in the midst 
of the common elements, and Let it divide the transistors from the 
ICs.
   And The Spirit of Babbage made the firmament and divided the 
common elements which were ICs from the common elements which were 
transistors:
   And it was so.
   And The Spirit of Babbage called the Firmament history. 
   And the evening & the morning were the 2nd day.
   And The Spirit of Babbage said, Let the common elements from recent 
history gather together unto one place and let the clubs appear: and 
it was so.
   And The Spirit of Babbage called the new clubs, homebrew clubs; and 
the gathering together of the common elements Zilog: and The Spirit of 
Babbage saw that it was good.
   And The Spirit of Babbage said, Let the Hardware be programmed after 
Jacquard's kind: and it was so.
   And the Hardware was programmed: and The Spirit of Babbage saw that 
it was good.
   And the evening and the morning were the 3rd day.
   And The Spirit of Babbage said, Let there be microcomputer companies 
to divide the 4 bit from the 8 bit microprocessor, the 8 bit from the 
16 bit microprocessor, and the 16 bit from the 32 bit microprocessor.
   And let them be for the existence of versatility in the world: and 
it was so.
   And The Spirit of Babbage made two great companies, the greater 
company to dominate the business world, and the lesser company to rule 
the graphics world: and The Spirit of Babbage made the competition too.
   And The Spirit of Babbage set them in the Fortune 500 to make sure 
they could be versatile: and The Spirit of Babbage saw it was good.
   And the evening and the morning were the 4th day.
   And The Spirit of Babbage created the Altair, which stored data on 
paper tape, And every Commodore Pet which stored data on cassette tape 
after his kind: and The Spirit of Babbage saw that it was good.
   And the evening and the morning were the 5th day.
   And The Spirit of Babbage said, Let the Amateur Computer Clubs 
bring forth the microcomputer, which stored data on disks, called 
Apple: and it was so.
   And The Spirit of Babbage said, Let us make IBM PCs in our own image, 
after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the Altair with 
paper tape storage, and over the Commodore Pet with cassette tape 
storage, and over the Apple with disk storage.
   So The Spirit of Babbage created the IBM PCs in his own image, in the 
image of The Spirit of Babbage created he it; XT and AT created he them.
   And The Spirit of Babbage said, Behold I have given you every 
programmer, who are in the clubs, and of every piece of software, who 
wrote all of the pieces; to you it shall be meat.
   And to all of the other computers with paper tape for storage, and to 
every computer with cassette tapes for storage, and to every computer 
with disk drives for storage, wherein they work, I have given all pieces 
of software for meat: and it was so.
   And The Spirit of Babbage saw everything that he had made, and, 
behold, it was very good. And the evening & the morning were the 6th day.

		            Chapter TWO

Thus the hardware and the software were finished, and all the host of them.
   And on the 7th day The Spirit of Babbage ended his work which he had 
made; and he rested in the seventh day from all the work he had made.
   But The Spirit of Babbage rested by playing computer games on all of his 
creations.
   And The Spirit of Babbage decided to bless this day by creating a place 
for him to play computer games peacefully. And The Spirit of Babbage said, 
Let there be a Charles Babbage Institute. And there the Spirit of Babbage 
awaits.
     
                 To be Continued...in the future.
			
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