Lee_Felsenstein_working


 * Lee Felsenstein **

=I. INFORMATION=

Lee is an american computer engineer. He has been a key figure in promoting the use of computing since the early 1960's.

In 1971 Felsenstein came into contact with a group of four computer science students who had dropped out of Berkeley and were living in a warehouse community in San Francisco called Project One. Within Project One, these former students created Computer Group One, and were trying to deliver computing power to non-profit organisations and social-action groups. The group obtained the donation of an obsolete time-sharing computer, an XDS 940, together with money to set it up and run it. They had also obtained a time-shared BASIC. Felsenstein signed on as chief engineer. The computer was installed in 1972. It was delivered to the non-profit organisation Resource One in two trucks, and it also required 23 tons of air conditioning.

By 1972-1974 he worked in a project in Berkeley, CA, called "Community Memory". Community Memory was the world's first public computerized bulletin board system and the earliest experiments in social media. It  was born when a group started thinking about information systems and community and how they fit together. Ken Colstad, Mark Szpakowski, Lee Felsentein and Efrem Lipkin were friends and partners, computer-savvy types who wanted to create a simple little system that could function as a source of community information. When the foursome hooked up with a group called Resource One that had access to a mainframe computer, they knew they had the pieces in hand to create their project.

H e hosted the Homebrew Computer Club, a seminal organization of computing enthusiasts who taught each other the value and techniques of coding and collaborating at a grassroots level. The open exchange of ideas that went on at its biweekly meetings, and the club newsletter, launched the personal computer revolution.

He was the designer of the Osborne 1, the first mass-produced portable computer. The computer was released on April 3, 1981. Many of his designs were leaders in reducing costs of computer technologies for the purpose of making them available to large markets. Felsenstein was named a "Pioneer of the Electronic Frontier" in 1994 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and in 2007, he was given the Editor's Choice Award for Creative Excellence by EE Times magazine. In 1998, Felsenstein founded the Free Speech Movement Archives as an online repository of historical information relating to that event, its antecedents and successors. In 2003 he designed an open-source of telecommunications and computer system for installation in remote village. Installation of the first system in Laos was unsuccessful, but the design has been tested on an Indian reservation in the US and continues in development in India. II. RESUME Resume

**III. ARTICLES**

Slaton, Joyce (2001). Remembering Community Memory/The Berkeley beginnings of online community.

For more articles and essays visit: Articles and essays

=IV. REFERENCES=

Lee's web site Lee's latest contribution to computing for learning is SMLD for logic learning. Lee Felsenstein Biography Homebrew Computer Club Community Memory Lee Felsenstein and the Convivial Computer Leuphana/LOOP Center Oral History Workshop - Community Memory, Free Speech and Computing An Early Door to Cyberspace: The Computer Memory Terminal Lee Felsenstein papers at Stanford