David H. Ahl (born May 17, 1939) is an American author who is the founder of ''

Creative Computing ''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 th ...

'' magazine. He is also the author of many

how-to The Linux Documentation Project (LDP) is a dormant an all-volunteer project that maintains a large collection of GNU and Linux-related documentation and publishes the collection online. It began as a way for hackers to share their documentation wi ...

book A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arr ...

s, including ''

BASIC Computer Games ''BASIC Computer Games'' is a compilation of type-in computer games in the BASIC programming language collected by David H. Ahl. Some of the games were written or modified by Ahl as well. Among its better-known games are '' Hamurabi'' and '' Sup ...

'', the first

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

book to sell more than a million copies.

Career

After earning degrees in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and

business administration Business administration, also known as business management, is the administration of a commercial enterprise. It includes all aspects of overseeing and supervising the business operations of an organization. From the point of view of management ...

, while completing his

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

. in

educational psychology Educational psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of human learning. The study of learning processes, from both cognitive and behavioral perspectives, allows researchers to understand individual differences i ...

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 unt ...

hired Ahl as a

marketing consultant Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to empha ...

in 1969 to develop its educational products line. He edited ''EDU'', DEC's

newsletter A newsletter is a printed or electronic report containing news concerning the activities of a business or an organization that is sent to its members, customers, employees or other subscribers. Newsletters generally contain one main topic of int ...

on educational uses of computers, that regularly published instructions for playing computer games on

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...

s. Ahl also talked DEC into publishing a book he had put together, ''101 BASIC Computer Games''. During the 1973 recession, DEC cut back on educational product development and Ahl was dismissed. Before he even received his last cheque, he was rehired into a DEC division dedicated to developing new hardware. This group became caught up in building a

that was smaller than any yet built, intending to bring the new product into new markets such as schools. DEC built a machine combining a

PDP-8 The PDP-8 is a 12-bit computing, 12-bit minicomputer that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units being sold over the model's ...

with a

VT50 The VT50 was a CRT-based computer terminal introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in July 1974. It provided a display with 12 rows and 80 columns of upper-case text, and used an expanded set of control characters and forward-only scro ...

terminal, and another that crammed a

PDP-11 The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold, ...

into a small portable chassis. When it was presented to DEC's Operations Committee, the engineering side loved it but the sales side was worried it would cut into the sales of their existing lines. The decision ultimately fell to Ken Olsen, who finally stated that "I can't see any reason that anyone would want a computer of his own." With that, the project was dead. Frustrated, Ahl left DEC in 1974, and started ''Creative Computing'', one of the earliest magazines covering the

microcomputer revolution The history of the personal computer as a mass-market consumer electronic device began with the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. A personal computer is one intended for interactive individual use, as opposed to a mainframe computer where ...

. For the next decade ''Creative Computing'' covered the whole spectrum of hobbyist, home, and personal computing, and although Ahl sold the publication to

Ziff Davis Ziff Davis, Inc. is an American digital media and internet company. First founded in 1927 by William Bernard Ziff Sr. and Bernard George Davis, the company primarily owns technology-oriented media websites, online shopping-related services, an ...

in the early 1980s, he continued in his capacity as Editor-in-Chief. In 2010, David Ahl helped re-publish a Special 25th and 30th Anniversary Edition of two of his classic programming books, specifically for a new

development environment In software deployment, an environment or tier is a computer system or set of systems in which a computer program or software component is deployed and executed. In simple cases, such as developing and immediately executing a program on the same m ...

for beginners, called

Microsoft Small Basic Microsoft Small Basic is a programming language, interpreter and associated IDE. Microsoft's simplified variant of BASIC, it is designed to help students who have learnt visual programming languages such as Scratch learn text-based programming ...

. In June 2022, Ahl released everything he had ever written, from prose to software, into the public domain.

References

External links

Basic Computer Games: Microsoft Small Basic Edition — Special 30th Anniversary Edition
Edited by David H. Ahl
David Ahl's Small Basic Computer Adventures — Special 25th Anniversary Edition
by David H. Ahl & Philip Conrod

at David Ahl's personal site
Basic Computer Games
by David Ahl
More Basic Computer Games
by David Ahl
Big Computer Games
by David Ahl

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ahl, David 1939 births Living people American publishers (people) Tepper School of Business alumni Cornell University College of Engineering alumni