My Door Into Summer
by John Feagans
Like the Heinlein cat I still looking for my Door Into Summer, when out of the blue, I got a call from Chuck Peddle on a Saturday afternoon. I had just packed the last of my possessions into my VW and ready to drive to Rochester, Minnesota from Ames, Iowa where I had been a computer science grad student. I had accepted a job offer from IBM to work in their System/34 group.
Chuck had a discussion the night before with Dr. Roger Camp, a professor of EE at Iowa State University with whom I had worked several 6502 projects. Roger met Chuck at Motorola where he had spent a sabbatical and they kept in touch. Chuck expressed his need for an experienced 6502 programmer and Roger expressed his concern to Chuck that I would be wasting my talent at IBM, and was the candidate.
In an oral history for the Computer History Museum, Chuck Peddle tells the story. "He (Roger Camp) says, I've got the perfect guy for you. He doesn't know it. He has no idea. He's taken a job with IBM. He's going to just get lost at IBM. I think he's the right guy for you. ... we kidnapped him, literally kidnapped him. His name is John Feagans, and he wrote all the software for all the Commodore products. It was exactly the right match."
So Chuck on the phone says, "Would you fly out to California and talk to us? We already made your reservations and if you decide not to stay we can fly you back before the end of the weekend." Chuck put his wife Shirley on the phone to confirm the flight times.
Chuck, his wife Shirley, and Bill Seiler picked me up at San Francisco Airport with Chuck driving and talking a mile a minute to sell me on the PET. Coming down Page Mill Rd from 280 I was a little concerned when Chuck made 3 U-turns in succession at the corner of Page Mill and the El Camino so he could enter the restaurant called "The Antique".
The restaurant was a street over from California Ave where Chuck took me to see the PET prototype. First thing I observed was the parking lot was littered with little prophylactics that I found out later were finger cots from the LCD production facility. Bill saw me puzzling and came up with a clever response.
Leonard Tramiel had just taken a trip to the Hannover Messe with the wooden PET and it had returned to the lab at 901 California. WOW! Turn it on and instantly programmable in BASIC. It was the appliance personal computer I had dreamed about having for my own since high school. Shirley typed the offer letter during the demo, and Chuck signed and handed it to me. I was speechless.
Chuck dropped me off at the Adobe Inn in Monte Sereno to think it over and he would come back in the morning to continue our discussion or take me back to the airport. He left me a copy of Heinlein's Door Into Summer that I should read.
