Mastodawn

Final book jacket design for my upcoming history of Sphere computers. Looks fab. The book can as of now still be pre-ordered via the Kickstarter campaign's "late pledges." https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bzotto/go-computer-now-the-story-of-sphere

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B Zotto 💪🤪🤳🏼Nov 12

This book talks about arrays, but uses the names "lists" (one-dimensional) and "tables" (two-dimensional) which honestly seems much easier to understand than the programming term of art

B Zotto 💪🤪🤳🏼Nov 12

The 1967 first edition of Kemeny & Kurtz's "BASIC Programming." The language was only three or four years old then, but was already spreading far enough beyond Dartmouth to warrant a real book published by Wiley & Sons. The matrix math was integral from the start, but didn't appear in microcomputer versions until much later, if at all.

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B Zotto 💪🤪🤳🏼Oct 31

Finally, here are two period photographs. A Polaroid with a VERY Halloween-appropriate handwritten caption, and a lovely mono photo of an enthusiastic Sphere user, at work on his machine. My book, Go Computer Now!, tells the story of Sphere corporation, a forgotten but important micro manufacturer from Utah in 1975-77. Please check it out on Kickstarter, I'm looking forward to printing it and challenging some ideas in computing history. It also has great images, like all of these. Thanks!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bzotto/go-computer-now-the-story-of-sphere

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B Zotto 💪🤪🤳🏼Oct 31

Next up are a couple of vintage marketing images from Sphere, rescanned from source at high resolution. The slanted-text ad was an 1/8th page advertisement that appeared only once, as far as I can tell. It has a lovely typographic quality to it. Note on the left, the Sphere's original keyboard had arrow (cursor) keys and a home key at the top of the numeric keypad. Sphere had a memory-mapped video display with cursor controlled editing built into ROM. Not bad for 1975.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bzotto/go-computer-now-the-story-of-sphere

B Zotto 💪🤪🤳🏼Oct 31

Happy Halloween! Here are some sample design spreads from my forthcoming book on the Sphere computer, company, and community. Archival, newly-commissioned, and never-before-seen images of the early micro era. Please check it out so we can get it printed! Thanks.

First up, with holiday themed capacitors, shows video and memory modules. The distinctive orange capacitors, which I LOVE, are Roederstein electrolytics. They are sometimes referred to as "Bakelite" style capacitors because of the hard plastic shell. These are European parts and I've never figured out why an Utah company would end up using them; these are rarely seen in US products. But that orange!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bzotto/go-computer-now-the-story-of-sphere

B Zotto 💪🤪🤳🏼Oct 20

B Zotto 💪🤪🤳🏼Oct 19

@mwichary Watched The Anderson Tapes (1971) last night and jumped to pause the movie here-- knew this looked familiar. Boy do I love that "9".

B Zotto 💪🤪🤳🏼Oct 19

An auspicious number for an early micro fundraising campaign (even better than the more apt 6800). If you have yet to check out my book about the unloved, obscure, but amazing Sphere computer and company, please give it a look! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bzotto/go-computer-now-the-story-of-sphere?ref=45yc5g

B Zotto 💪🤪🤳🏼Feb 23, 2025

FDC/1 Minifloppy Disk Controller. A 5.25" Floppy Controller for Sphere computers. An art project+useful thing done as a learning experience. https://sphere.computer/shop.html

Sphere Shop

Sphere items for sale. FDC/1 5.25 inch floppy disk controller and MEM/1 64K memory module.

working on	https://sphere.computer
type foundry	https://www.fogcitytype.com
fixing and restoring	https://instagram.com/hayesvalleyhardware
on twitter...	https://twitter.com/bzotto