ComputerTown, bringing computer literacy to your community

de Liza Loop

This book documents the early life of a pioneering project (perhaps the first ever) to make computers available to everyone through installations in public libraries, boys and girls clubs, senior centers, anywhere that people gather. It describes the games, gatherings, fun, and demystifying of the first Apple, Pet, Radio Shack, and Atari personal computers. The brainchild of Bob Albrecht, founder of People's Computer Company, and his librarian tennis partner, the original ComputerTown in Menlo Park, California public library provided enough orientation to get a special library card that enabled kids and adults to use the library microcomputers, check out software, and to guide others. Over the next several years the idea spread across the United States and beyond, leading to the formation of ComputerTown International. The ComputerTown Project was funded by a grant from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and donations from local communities where independent ComputerTown Projects took root. The book is a major reediting of the final report prepared for the NSF augmented with excerpts and photos from the ComputerTown Newsletter. The book's authors all worked together and share their first-hand experience of the people and programs that made ComputerTown such a significant phenomenon in the history of computing in learning and education.