You wouldn’t know by shuffling past 4Printings in Mountain View today, but 50 years ago this December, Paul Terrell opened the first Byte Shop in the same building.

One of the first personal computer stores in the history of the world, the Byte Shop sold several products, including fully assembled Altair microcomputers. Terrell was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club, which also started in 1975. Other members included Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

In a now famous story oft repeated by Cult of Mac fanatics, the very next year, 1976, Jobs walked into the Byte Shop and tried to sell Terrell the kit for his new machine, the Apple 1.

In those days, it was common for people to buy kits rather than complete computers, since there really weren’t very many complete computers. The kit would us

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