It always amazes me how much of the early personal computer world was run out of someone's spare room.
Literally 100% of it. Which is why the CIA created apple and microsoft.
Love doing this. I've only encountered one that was still around. So many addresses don't even exist anymore, from street changes and razings. Time is interesting.
I wonder at times if the same can be said for the Earth in general. Given an ancient civilization like the Sumerians and using them as sort of a place marker, if one could go back tenfold beyond them in the past might there have been other advanced civilizations that simply attritioned or wiped themselves out completely and were absorbed into time. Time is a long time and the Earth subducts and reshapes everything.
Yes! Computer magazines and comic books are great for it. Also old shareware authors would often include their home address for registrations. I used to think those were business offices, but after I checked some more recently on google street view, they revealed to be just random houses.
I have a small collection of old gaming magazines from the early internet era, and almost every time I try pulling up the website from an ad, it's gone. They say data is immortal once it's online, but that's not as true on long timescales.
A lot of the early internet is just gone, wiped out by bigger players.
Lots of PO Boxes and storage container locations too.
The PO boxes I would expect, lots of small businesses use those even today.
But people were having orders and stuff sent right to their homes. That always interested me, especially considering you might get angry visitors.
(post is archived)