Hobby Computer Club

HCC logo

The Hobby Computer Club (HCC) is a Dutch computer club, based in Houten, the Netherlands which was established on April 27, 1977 by a small group of people who lived near the town of Utrecht and which grew to become a nationally significant club of over 200,000 members in 2003.^[1] The HCC was inspired by the legendary Homebrew Computer Club which organized meetings in Silicon Valley since March 1975.^{[citation needed]}

The first HCC meeting was in a building of the Delft University of Technology, at that moment the HCC had 12 members.

A small stenciled (A5 size) newsletter was published irregularly, but after attending a meeting for model train hobbyists the HCC grew explosively. Soon the HCC had branches in every part of the Netherlands, and through the years the HCC grew to more than 150,000 members. The small newsletter turned into a monthly computer magazine ("Computer!totaal")[2] that still has an internal newsletter called hcc!link. The HCC now also offers a free Internet service to its members, as well as free technical assistance with computer problems.

For many years a big exhibition called the "HCC dagen" (HCC Days) was held in the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht with many hundreds of thousands of attendees.^[2]

See also

• Microcomputer Club Nederland

References

1. ^ (Dutch) De eeuw van de computer - De geschiedenis van de informatietechnologie in Nederland by Adrienne van den Bogaard (editor), Harry Lintsen, Frank Veraart and Onno de Wit (2008), p.171 (Google Books)
2. ^ [1]^{[dead link]}

External links

• Official website (in Dutch)