Creative Computing launched October 1974

It was 50 years ago this month, in October 1974, that Creative Computing, one of the greatest computer magazines of the 1970s and 1980s, made its debut.

Origins at Digital Equipment Corporation

Competing with Byte magazine was tough, even though Creative Computing actually beat Byte to market by several months. The only way a general purpose computing magazine could really do it was by taking a different angle. That was the secret of Creative Computing’s success.

The idea came to its founder, David Ahl, when he was working at Digital Equipment Corporation. Ahl started at DEC in 1970, and part of his job was publishing a computer newsletter aimed at educators. Its circulation was 7-10 times larger than the number of computers DEC had sold into the educational market. He learned that people who used other computers were subscribing to his newsletter and adapting it to whatever platforms they used.

Ahl recognized an opportunity, and he also recognized DEC was going to completely miss it. In spite of him having evidence to the contrary, DEC CEO Ken Olsen insisted there was no market for a computer for individuals. As a result, Ahl left DEC, briefly taking a job at AT&T until the time was right for him to launch a magazine.

He started receiving subscription requests even before the magazine was ready to launch. This gave him enough capital to print additional issues and send them to schools and libraries where other potential subscribers would be likely to see copies. This worked, allowing him to quickly build circulation. Then the first microcomputers hit the market, providing another growth opportunity.

By 1978, it had 60,000 subscribers and nearly $1 million in revenue.

What made Creative Computing different?

David Ahl’s background was in education, a background that showed in his newsletter he published at DEC, and that he continued at Creative Computing. Byte’s target audience was hobbyists and engineers, where Creative Computing’s audience was people looking to use a computer as an educational aid. There was certainly overlap in the two magazines’ readership, but the differences made it easier for the two magazines to coexist. Some people would be much more comfortable reading one over the other, and some authors would be much more comfortable writing for one than the other.

Creative Computing covered everything, and reading its issues from the late 1970s is enlightening. Today, we think of a world where kit computers gave way to pre-built computers, and the Apple II, Commodore PET, and Radio Shack TRS-80 took over the world. Flipping through the pages of Creative Computing shows that wasn’t the case at all. The kit computers and the pre-built computers coexisted for a number of years. Not only that, various other companies did attempt to compete. Flipping through the pages of Creative Computing, you can see the product announcements for those systems, some occasional editorial coverage, and advertising. Two obscure systems they covered include the Imagination Machine and the Interact.

Most of these systems didn’t become popular enough to end up with their own magazines covering them. But Creative Computing gave them coverage for as long as both of them remained viable. If you are a fan of overlooked platforms from late 1970s and early 1980s, Creative Computing is a must read. Not only is it likely they covered things Byte missed, the way they covered it when there was overlap was very different.

Type in programs

One of the hallmarks of Creative Computing was its type-ins. Like the rest of the magazine, the type-ins were generally not machine specific, but instead were frequently written in a way that they could run on a variety of platforms with little or no modification. It meant the programs could be a bit bland, but it also left plenty of room for you to customize the software yourself to take advantage of the machine you had.

One example was its 1978 publication of the game Oregon Trail. It wasn’t the same as the commercial version of the game marketed for the Apple II. This was a completely text-based version, based on earlier code that had run on minicomputers since 1971. It was simple enough you could adapt it for pretty much any home computer’s version of Basic, as long as it had enough memory. The catch was, the program was around 18K in size. But as long as you had 24K or more of RAM, customizing the game would have been a fun project.

For that matter, abbreviated versions for computers with less RAM soon appeared, presumably based on that code. I played a version called Westward Ho, developed for the Commodore PET.

Selling out to Ziff-Davis

As the computer market grew, it became increasingly difficult for an independent publication to compete with the larger publishers. In addition, most of those larger publishers were interested in acquiring at least one of those independent publications, as would be much more cost effective than trying to launch a new magazine into this market. As a result, Creative Computing sold out to Ziff Davis in 1982, the company that would later publish magazines like PC Magazine and Computer Shopper.

Ziff Davis shut down Creative Computing’s side businesses selling software and peripherals, preferring to concentrate solely on being a magazine and to not compete with any of its advertisers.

Creative Computing had a good run, lasting a little over 10 years, folding after the December 1985 issue. By 1985, the general purpose computing magazines were struggling as it was frequently possible to find one or more magazines dedicated strictly to whatever platform you had. Someone who was on the fence about what computer to buy might subscribe to a general purpose magazine, but after they made the decision, they were likely to drop the magazine in favor of a magazine like 80 Micro that was fully dedicated to whatever machine they had, or at least splitting coverage with another computer of the same brand.

Creative Computing as a historical reference

If pre-1985 computer history interests you, Creative Computing is essential reading. Not only did it cover platforms that didn’t necessarily get a lot of coverage elsewhere, it could also be pretty outspoken about the systems that ultimately won. For example, David Ahl called the IBM PC and PCjr mediocre. He said they would probably win, but we didn’t have to be happy about that. Although the PCjr was not successful, its close relative, the Tandy 1000, definitely was.

In addition, David Ahl’s analysis of companies who failed was also essential reading. His perspective was a bit different from many other computer journalists, having worked at a computer company himself.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.