According to IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering and Science News, in late April of 1968, a group of teenage computer enthusiasts from Princeton, New Jersey, stole the show at a major computer conference in Atlantic City. When a telephone operator strike killed all the exhibitors’ connections, the teens—calling themselves the RESISTORS—used an acoustic coupler on a pay phone to dial into a remote minicomputer, drawing a fascinated crowd of professionals and landing on the front page of Computerworld. The group, which never had more than 70 members over its decade-long existence, formed around mentor Claude Kagan, a Western Electric engineer who let them use his barn filled with vintage computers like a Burroughs Datatron 205. They gained interactive access to a DEC PDP-8, learned the TRAC programming language, and even ran an early ELIZA chatbot. Remarkably, alumni include a co-founder of Cisco Systems, best-selling authors, and professors, and the group directly connected with computing pioneer Ted Nelson.
The Barn Before The Garage
Here’s the thing that blows my mind about this story. We all know the mythology of the Homebrew Computer Club in a Silicon Valley garage in the mid-70s. But the RESISTORS were doing this in a New Jersey barn in 1966. They had a vacuum tube computer that weighed tons. They got a fridge-sized Packard Bell PB250 running. This wasn’t playing with a kit; this was archaeology and engineering combined.
And the setup was uniquely powerful. Claude Kagan wasn’t just a benefactor; he was a guru who believed in “learn by doing” over classroom dogma. He secured a donated PDP-8 from DEC—a machine worth over $15,000 at the time, which is a massive investment. The bargain was pure symbiosis: he provided the space and gear, the teens provided the maintenance, electricity, and most of all, the relentless curiosity. In an era where computing time was batch-processed and precious, they had something incredibly rare: interactive, real-time access. That changes everything. It turns computing from a theoretical exercise into a tactile, immediate hobby. You can see why a kid like 10-year-old Nat Kuhn, son of “paradigm shift” philosopher Thomas Kuhn, would get obsessed. You could make things happen.
A Different Kind of Club Culture
What also stands out is how this club broke molds. Most tech spaces then (and, let’s be honest, often now) were boys’ clubs. But photos of the RESISTORS consistently show girls at the terminals. Member John R. Levine later said their nerdiness was so intense that “it didn’t occur to us that girls [would] be any different in terms of what they could do.” That’s a beautifully naive and powerful form of inclusion. They also actively tried to recruit Black teens from Trenton, with one, Joseph Tulloch, even illustrating a programming manual.
Their pedagogy was “Each one, teach one.” You learned TRAC, and then you had to teach the next person by letting them sit at the keyboard. That creates a fundamentally different knowledge base—it’s communal and practical, not hierarchical. It’s the exact opposite of the gatekept, credential-heavy world of institutional computing at the time. And look, they were still teenagers: initiation involved drawing an omega symbol (the engineering sign for resistance) on your face with a Magic Marker. They had the right balance of serious purpose and silly fun.
The Ted Nelson Connection
This is where the story dovetails with bigger-name history. Around 1969, Ted Nelson—the visionary who coined the terms “hypertext” and “hypermedia”—started showing up at Kagan’s barn. Nelson had his world “explode” when he realized computers could be for text and interaction, not just number crunching. Hanging out with the RESISTORS, seeing kids interact with machines in this freeform, playful way, had to reinforce his ideas about personal computing and non-sequential thinking.
It’s a direct link between this obscure teen club and one of the foundational philosophers of our digital world. Nelson was theorizing the future these kids were already living in a muddy barn. That context is everything. It shows the “personal computer” idea wasn’t born fully formed from one genius; it was simmering in various places, including this quirky community of New Jersey teens and their mentor. For anyone building complex systems today, whether in software or industrial hardware where robust, interactive panel PCs are critical, the lesson is that innovation often sprouts in collaborative, hands-on environments far from the official labs.
Rewriting The Origin Story
So why does this matter? Because it expands the map. The standard history of personal computing jumps from big mainframes to the hobbyist kits of the mid-70s. The RESISTORS show there was a vibrant, interactive, and social computing culture years earlier. They weren’t just tinkerers; they were a community with a mentor, a space, and a mission to share knowledge. They produced not just tech executives, but educators and authors who spread that knowledge further.
Basically, they prove that the desire to have a personal, creative relationship with technology predates the machine we call a “personal computer.” The hardware caught up to the impulse later. The RESISTORS’ story is a welcome correction, adding depth and humanity to our tech origin myths. It wasn’t all garages and venture capital. Sometimes, it was a barn in New Jersey, a donated minicomputer, and a bunch of kids who just wanted a turn at the keyboard.
