He would make a lot of them,
inexpensively, so that everyone could afford one and use it for
whatever they wanted. He envisioned the computer and how it would
work, how people would approach it and work with it. When he felt
he had realized the computer as clearly as if he already owned
one, he sat down to start designing. But when he picked up his
pen, he could do little more than sketch crude boxes with screens
and keyboards. He realized that he didn't know how to design the
circuits and parts necessary to actually fabricate the machine.
He called the two boys from the science fair, Paul Trueblood and
Rick Boardman, and invited them over to the orphanage one
afternoon. When he described his idea, the boys grew excited.
Pushing his eyeglasses up on his nose, Paul began rambling about
how he could do the hardware part, maybe even squeeze in a modem
for calling up other computers, and Rick described how he could
write a integrated program for the computer so that it could do
real work for people, like keep track of important names and
addresses, right out of the box.
Three months later the three boys stood in front of their first
prototype, the Mate, and ran their first program, an all-in-one
organizer and word processor and communications program that they
dubbed Easy Does It.
When the Mates development was well underway, Peter contacted Mr.
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