So we had to make something that would run on a Mac, that would be easier to
use, that would be cheaper than what was
available on the market back then which, you know.
And also we had this programming language we sort of inherited from the MIT called
Processing, which was used to teach about programming to artists and designers.
So we thought, well, you know, why don't we try to make
that run on a microcontroller, so that was based on Java.
Microcontrollers tend to, they don't like Java very, very much.
They prefer languages, it's easier to work with languages like C++ or C.
So we did some experiments, then one student
of mine did a thesis on the [UNKNOWN].
So different projects sort of followed and then we
ended up with the first version of Arduino which,
based on the work that this student Hernando Barragan
did on a project called Wiring, we re-implemented it from scratch.
So we reused the APIs but we rewrote the whole thing to be completely open source,
because we also wanted something that would be
easy for people to reproduce, to build upon.
So we wanted to remove the barriers, and one of the things that we did is also
that, since at the time we haven't got, in a way, a clue how we were
going to manufacture, we didn't want to set up
like a classic manufacturing company, or go to a
venture capitalist or something because obviously there was,
back then nobody would have even talked to us.
So we thought, you know, let's release the hardware as open source so that
people can build it if they want to.
And they started to make, we just started to make the PCBs of the sort of two-hole
version and, and so we, we would just give them away to people as a gift.
So, just take this PCB, assemble one.
And some people started to assemble it. So they went on the website,
they got the instructions, they started to write.