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Lee Felsenstein is born...
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; his grandfather was an inventor who inspired him from a young age, leading Lee to develop an interest in electronics at the age of 11 (“Philadelphia 1945 – 1963”). -
Lee starts undergraduate studies...
at the University of California, Berkeley; Lee’s field of study was Electrical Engineering (“ University of California, Berkeley 1963 – 1967”). -
Lee is in contact with...
one of UC Berkeley’s Free Speech movement leaders Michael Rossman; Rossman’s ideology on free speech and communication was foundational in shaping Lee’s vision for an interconnected digitized social space (Doub). -
Lee graduates...
from Berkeley with a degree in Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences; by this point, he has worked as a computer engineer at Ampex Corporation and learned the computer language BASIC, and been involved with nonprofit corporation Resource One inc. for multiple years (“Resource One / Community Memory – 1972-1972”). -
Lee Felsenstein and Efrem Lipkin...
work to develop the first “phase” or terminal of the “Community Memory” (CM), alongside other computer programmers. The computing machine was described by the CM group as, “a communication system which allows people to make contact with each other on the basis of mutually expressed interests, without having to cede judgment to third parties” (Levy 127). -
Lee and Efrem took a...
Teletype Model 33 computer to a record store, called Leopolds’ Records on Durant Ave. in Berkeley, California, and set up the first CM terminal – which worked like an “electronic bulletin board” open to the public (“Resource One / Community Memory – 1972-1972”). -
The CM team...
place a second terminal at a public library in the Mission District of San Francisco; however the terminal quickly became faulty and required a software update, which was not an option as the team had no funding for new technology (Levy 148). -
Due to a lack of...
funds, internal disagreements, and mixed ideas of CM’s future, the team takes a break to work on developing a new structure for the project and hopefully create a new nonprofit network of CM terminal (Levy 235-238). -
The CM team rebrands...
to the “Community Memory Project” and established a new networked program that would be implemented across terminals in the Berkeley area (Felsenstein 4-5). -
The CM Project...
publishes a promotional brochure titled “The Community Memory Project: An Introduction” – available to read here, pages 33-47); the brochure explained the project’s history, how the program worked, how to input messages, how to navigate messages, and the future goals of Community Memory (Doub). -
The CM Project set up...
four public terminals with the new networking program in Berkeley (Felsenstein 5). -
Steven Levy publishes...
"Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution", which Lee was interviewed for in the research process. -
The CM Project receives...
a Telecommunications Education Trust grant from the California Public Utilities Commission, allowing them to create 10 functioning terminals across Berkeley that used “front-end/back-end architecture” (Felsenstein 5). -
The CM systems are...
shut down due to a lack of funding and consistent engagement within the community, as well as a shifting focus to the World Wide Web (“Guide to the Community Memory Records”). -
Lee publishes an article...
in the Dr. Dobbs' Journal titled “The Commons of Information”, providing his insight into the Community Memory Project and his hopes for the future of computer information and communication. -
Archivists Bo Doub and Kim Hayden...
digitize the records of Community Memory through the Computer History Museum; records and material in the collection were accumulated from 1974 to 2000 (Doub).