David H. Ahl, Date of Birth

    

David H. Ahl

Magazine founder

Date of Birth: 17-May-1939

Profession: writer, author, publisher

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Taurus


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About David H. Ahl

  • David H.
  • Ahl (born 1939) is the founder of Creative Computing magazine.
  • He is also the author of many how-to books, including BASIC Computer Games, the first computer book to sell more than a million copies.After earning degrees in electrical engineering and business administration, while completing his Ph.D.
  • in educational psychology, Digital Equipment Corporation hired Ahl as a marketing consultant in 1969 to develop its educational products line.
  • He edited EDU, DEC's newsletter on educational uses of computers, that regularly published instructions for playing computer games on minicomputers.
  • 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. He was rehired into a DEC division dedicated to developing new hardware, and his group became caught up in building a computer 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 with a VT50 terminal, and another that crammed a PDP-11 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.
  • For the next decade Creative Computing covered the whole spectrum of hobbyist/home/personal computing, and although Ahl sold it to Ziff Davis 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 for beginners, called Microsoft Small Basic.

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