''Creative Computing'' was one of the earliest magazines covering the microcomputer revolution. Published from October 1974 until December 1985, the magazine covered the spectrum of hobbyist/home/personal computing in a more accessible format than the rather technically oriented ''
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...
''.
The magazine was created to cover educational-related topics. Early issues include articles on the use of computers in the classroom, various simple programs like madlibs and various programming challenges, mostly in BASIC. By the late 1970s, it had moved towards more general coverage as the
microcomputer
A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PC ...
market emerged. Hardware coverage became more common, but type-in programs remained common into the early 1980s.
The company published several books, the most successful being '' BASIC Computer Games'', the first million-selling computer book. Their ''Best of Creative Computing'' collections were also popular. ''Creative Computing'' also published software on cassette and
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined ...
for the popular computer systems of the time and had a small hardware business.
Ziff-Davis purchased ''Creative Computing'' in 1983 and closed the non-magazine endeavors.
History
DEC and Edu
Prior to starting ''Creative Computing'', in the early 1970s David H. Ahl was working in the educational department of
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...
(DEC) where he started publication of their ''Edu'' newsletter in the spring of 1971. At the time, DEC had an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 machines being used in educational settings, so he was surprised to find the number of subscribers reach 20,000 after 18 months. He found that many subscribers did not have a DEC machine but were using ''Edu'' as a source of general information on computers in educational settings. This began his earliest thoughts about a non-DEC magazine aimed at this market.
On 22 February 1973, Ahl was let go during a downsizing at DEC. Even before he received his last paycheck, he was hired by a different department to help develop new low-end versions of the DEC minicomputer line. During this period he collected many user submissions to ''Edu'' and convinced DEC to publish ''101 BASIC Computer Games'' in the summer of 1973. This was a hit, eventually selling over 10,000 copies in three publishing runs in July 1973, April 1974, and March 1975.
By 1974, the team had produced two new designs, a PDP-8 combined with a VT50 terminal, and a briefcase-sized version of the PDP-8 with a small
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined ...
that would be used with an external computer terminal. Other divisions within DEC saw these inexpensive machines as a threat to their own products and agitated against them, causing debates that eventually worked their way to the CEO. When the new designs were personally canceled by Ken Olsen with the statement that "I can't see any reason that anyone would want a computer of his own" Ahl quit DEC and took a position at
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile ...
.
Formation
It was at this point that Ahl decided to move ahead with the educational-focused magazine. Reasoning that the educational market would be of interest to public foundations and many companies, Ahl sent funding proposals to over a hundred companies and received nothing. Instead, he used his own funds to print 11,000 copies of a flier that he sent to
Hewlett-Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
and other minicomputer vendors, which resulted in 850 subscriptions to a magazine that did not even exist yet.
Instead of printing 850 copies, Ahl split the subscription money in two; he kept one half for future operations, and used the other half to print as many copies of the new magazine as he could. This allowed for the printing of 8,000 copies of the first edition, which were completed on 7 October 1974. The subscribers were sent their copies first, but the rest were sent for free to a wide variety of companies, libraries and schools. He followed the same pattern for the next three issues. The trick worked, and subscriptions began to pour in. During this period the magazine was based in
Morristown, New Jersey
Morristown () is a town and the county seat of Morris County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Altair 8800 had been announced and Ahl began looking for new authors who could write for the exploding microcomputer market. By 1976 the content was roughly split between the education and microcomputing market. At that point, the magazine started actively looking for advertisers and the November/December 1976 issue was the first to be printed on coated paper rather than
newsprint
Newsprint is a low-cost, non-archival paper consisting mainly of wood pulp and most commonly used to print newspapers and other publications and advertising material. Invented in 1844 by Charles Fenerty of Nova Scotia, Canada, it usually has a ...
to provide better quality ads.
By 1978 the subscriptions hit 60,000, and revenue was approaching $1 million. In July 1978, Ahl quit his position at AT&T to work at ''Creative Computing'' full time. This caused friction with his wife. In August, they purchased ROM magazine and two smaller newsletters and combined their content into the magazine. In January 1979, the magazine went monthly from bimonthly.
By 1979 the magazine had outgrown the single-family home it was being run from, and Ahl looked for a larger duplex home that would allow him to live with his wife in one half and run the magazine from the other. It was at this time that Regis McKenna, the advertising company handling
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
, was asked to pay an overdue advertising bill. The company provided a canceled check proving they had already done so. When they began tracking it down, the police were called and found that two people in the company had embezzled $100,000 by sending some incoming cheques to their own account at a different bank. This was only discovered because one of the conspirators had forgotten to mark the bill with McKenna as paid, causing a second invoice to be sent out.
When she was told the story, Ahl's wife had enough and kicked him out of the house pending a
divorce
Divorce (also known as dissolution of marriage) is the process of terminating a marriage or marital union. Divorce usually entails the canceling or reorganizing of the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage, thus dissolving th ...
. He moved into the only unused room in the other side of the building. During this time, Ted Nelson, known for the invention of hypertext, was briefly the editor. Nelson would arrive at 5 pm and work all night, waking Ahl in the bedroom when he started printing on a Qumedaisy wheel printer. In October 1980 the company moved to a much larger office building.
Through this period, featured writers included Robert Swirsky, David Lubar, and John J. Anderson. The magazine regularly included BASIC
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the ...
for utility programs and games, which users could manually enter into their home computers. The April issues, starting in 1980, became famous for their parodies of the major computer magazines of the time.
Ziff-Davis
Larger publishers began taking note of the computer market. A watershed moment was in 1979 when
McGraw-Hill
McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes refere ...
purchased ''
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...
''. By 1982, most of the quality magazines had been purchased and only a few large ones remained independent, including '' Compute!'', ''
Interface Age
''Interface Age'', "published for the home computerist", was a computer magazine aimed at the early microcomputer and home computer market. Its first issue was published in August 1976 and the last one in September 1984. It had a technical focus ...
'', '' Family Computing'' and ''Creative Computing''.
Realizing they were being pushed out of the market due to the huge budgets and marketing power of these major players, in 1982 Ahl approached several potential buyers, including
Atari
Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc., founded in Sunnyvale, Ca ...
, CBS and Ziff-Davis. In 1983 Ahl sold the company to Ziff-Davis, which at that time published 28 different magazines. Ahl remained the Editor-in-Chief. The magazine moved to Los Angeles, California. At their peak, the magazine reached about 500,000 subscriptions.
Through the early 1980s, and especially with the launch of the
IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...
, the market began to shift from a hobby-and-educational oriented one to more and more business applications. Ziff quickly shifted the focus of the magazine to be more software-oriented, and the programming articles disappeared shortly after the sale. This attempt to refocus on business computing was not successful, and when Bill Ziff had a cancer scare in 1985 he began concentrating his businesses, selling off many of the specialty magazines. Ziff ultimately ceased publication of ''Creative Computing'' in December 1985.
Other magazines
The company also began publication of several other magazines at different times, but none of these were very successful and tended to have very short production runs. Among these were ''Small Business Computing'', ''Sync Magazine'' for the ZX81, and ''Video and Arcade Games''.
Books
The company also published several books. Among these were three volumes of ''The Best of Creative Computing Magazine'' (Creative Computing Press) in 1976, 1977, and 1980. The cover of volume 2 was illustrated by underground cartoonist Gilbert Shelton. ''101 BASIC Computer Games'' was ported to Microsoft BASIC and published in 1978 as '' BASIC Computer Games''. It became the first million-selling computer book. This was followed by ''More BASIC Computer Games'' in 1979.
It also published the first ''The Best of Byte'' collection, in spite of being friendly competitors with ''
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...
''. The relationship ended with the McGraw-Hill purchase.
Software
A number of home computer games were published under the Sensational Software banner, also known as Creative Computing Software. Their best seller was a version of '' Space Invaders'' for the
Apple II
The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...
. Ziff-Davis closed the division as they felt it competed with their advertisers.
Titles included:
* '' Air Traffic Controller'' (1979)
*: Released on cassette for the TRS-80 and Apple II.
* '' Space Games-3'' (1980) ''CS-3002''
*: A collection of 4 games, containing ''Ultratrek'', ''Romulan'', ''Starwars'', ''Starlanes''; released on cassette for the TRS-80.
* ''
Space and Sport Games
''Space and Sport Games'' is a 1980 collection of video games published by Creative Computing.
Contents
''Space and Sport Games'' is a compilation of nine simple games, three of which have a space theme.
Reception
Bruce F. Webster reviewed '' ...
'' (1980)
*: A collection of 9 games, with 3 space games amongst them. Released on diskette for the Apple II.
* ''Super Invasion/Spacewar'' (1980)
*: A collection of 2 games, containing '' Super Invasion'' and '' Spacewar''; released on diskette for the Apple II.
* ''Action & Bumping Games'' (1981)
*: A collection of 6 games, containing ''Bumper Blocks'', ''Obstacle Course'', ''Hustle Jr.'', ''Moto Jump'', ''Mine Rover'', ''Road Machine''; released on diskette for the Apple II.
* '' Milestones'' (1981)
*: Released on cassette and diskette for the Apple II.
Hardware
The company also briefly sold hardware under the Peripherals Plus brand. The main product was a music card for the Apple II, although they also sold a
plotter
A plotter is a machine that produces vector graphics drawings. Plotters draw lines on paper using a pen, or in some applications, use a knife to cut a material like vinyl or leather. In the latter case, they are sometimes known as a cutting ...
and a few other products. Ziff closed this division as well.