How The Oregon Trail Game Made Apple Computers Famous

The story of the Oregon Trail game, Apple computers, and the integration of computers into elementary school classrooms is a tale of timing, environment, and the drive of key individuals.

What You’ll Discover

The story begins in 1963 when Dale of Friends, a teacher at the University of Minnesota High School, advocated for computer access in classrooms, which started a movement.
Key developments that followed:

• Dale secured resources and created a computer network.
• The Minneapolis St. Paul School District formed TIES to expand computer access.
• Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger created the first Oregon Trail game.
• Don reintroduced the game through MECC, making it accessible to Minnesota schools.
• Apple, led by Steve Jobs, sought to revolutionize computer access.
• MECC, the Zuckman family and Steve Jobs met at the West Coast Computer Faire.
• The Zuckman family helped Apple secure a contract with MECC to supply computers to schools.
• MECC’s software and Apple computers gained national popularity, leading to widespread computer adoption in schools.
• Dale LaFrenz’s mission to get computers into schools was realized.

How The Oregon Trail Game Made Apple Computers Famous

Many cool stories start out with an incredible first line, and sometimes authors spend a great deal of time crafting that first line. I think this story is deserving of such an honor, but I’ve yet to determine what the first line would be because the story encompasses so much. It’s the story of timing and environment and people would drive. It’s the story of the Oregon Trail game, the story of how Apple computers came to be. It’s the story of how computers got into elementary school classrooms. And it was experienced by millions of people in the 60s,7s, and 80s.

And yet, the story itself took a lot of research to discover because what you are about to hear is unknown to everyone listening.

The Zuckman Family

This tale begins back in 1941 when the Zuckman family started a radio repair business in Minnesota. They repaired electronics for schools, for local businesses, for municipalities, for individuals. They fixed all kinds of electronics, and they would own that business as is until 1977. That’s the year the Zuckmans play a crucial role in tying together what you are about to hear next.

Dale LaFrenz’s Computer Network

The story doesn’t truly begin until 1963. when a teacher at the University of Minnesota High School named Dale LaFrenz declared that kids need access to computers in the classroom. Remember, we’re talking about 1963. This singular statement started a movement that changed the world. But he didn’t do it alone. Just as in every successful story, the time and environment play an important role.

Dale LaFrenz lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota. which at the time was the Silicon Valley of the United States. IBM, Univac, Medtronic, Sperry Rand, Honeywell, Central Data Corps, they were all in Minneapolis. As such, employees of these tech giants were spread throughout the city. These employees worked on school boards, coached football teams, and had students in the Minneapolis St. Paul School District, which meant if you wanted to push computers, there was probably someone willing to help.

Well, Dale decided early on that he was going to build a computer network for his school. And along with many other like-minded teachers for other schools in the district to make it happen, they were going to need computers, telephone lines, and a giant server. But he really needed funds because, as you and I both know, there is no school system that is just flush with cash, willing to try outlandish new things.

So, using his tenacity, Dale reached out to friends at Dartmouth University in New Hampshire and got permission to use timesharing space on their giant GE computer. And then he reached out to GE and got himself a $5,000 grant to help build this computer network. That money got them the computers they needed and helped pay the long-distance phone charges each time a computer dialed into the timeshare network.

Not a perfect system, but one that worked.

Being so new, school schools had the students using the computers in janitor’s closets, back offices, and backs of the classrooms. But the kids loved it. Over the next couple of years, his experiment was so successful with teachers and students learning on the computer that the Minneapolis St. Paul School District created a group called TIES, Total Information for Education Systems group. And they wanted Dale to head it.

Their goal was to take Dale’s experiment and push it from 20 schools to all 18 Minneapolis St. Paul school districts.

In order to scale it larger, he needed to get rid of the overhead long distance phone line costs associated with connecting to Dartmouth. So, he found a GE server nearby at Pillsbury that served the exact function, and the new TIES group was off and running for all the Minneapolis St. Paul school districts.

The Origin of the Oregon Trail Game

That brings us to three new people vital to this story’s success. Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger were students at the nearby Carlton College. They were studying to be teachers and had student teaching assignments in the Minneapolis St. Paul School District. Bill and Paul were math majors. They’d taken some computer programming classes in this rich computer environment. And Don was a social studies major with a big upcoming project for his class.

Don was about to teach his class about the U.S. Westward Expansion of the United States, but he wanted to make it interesting. So, he decided to create a game based on the 2,170 mile wagon wheel trail that settlers used to get from the Missouri River to the lush lands of Oregon. The game would involve drawing the trail on a map, putting checkpoints on the map, and then the kids would answer questions at the checkpoints to move themselves down the trail. The questions he would have the students answer involved everyday life the settlers undertook, things like transportation and money and food and illness.

The students really had to learn what it was like to live on the trail and make decisions based on those things. Don took pride in the idea that he actually read diaries of settlers to help come up with the questions. So the students were getting a really rich learning experience. When Bill and Paul saw what he was doing, they said, “Don, this would make a perfect computer application.”

Since it was question and answer based, the teletype machine that the students had access to could be programmed to print out questions and respond to the students answers. (Computers back then didn’t have monitors.) Don said, “Well, I don’t think we can do it. My class starts in 8 days.” That might have been a speed bump, but it didn’t stop Bill, Paul and Don from creating the first educational computer game that had ever existed, in 8 days.

And then on December 3rd, 1971. Don loaded the game up to the TIES Timesharing Network and the Oregon Trail was officially played for the first time.

The kids didn’t care there wasn’t a monitor. They thought it was the best game they’d ever played and they lined up to play it. They lined up after school to play it. They signed up to play off times. Teachers and students went gaga for this game. But not only was it a question and answer game, it was so cleverly created that no two games names would ever be the same. The computer weighted all conditions, including how quickly the students answered in populating the next question.

It was a viral hit in the schools. And remember, Dale LaFrenz had set up a computer network for Minneapolis schools. So, when other teachers learned of the Oregon Trail game, they could connect so students all over Minneapolis were playing this game.

Sadly, Don was student teaching from Carlton College. So, when his semester was over at the end of December. He took the computer game down from the network. He printed out all the code three times in fact, rolled it up and called it the Sacred Scrolls and then quietly graduated from college at Carlton a couple semesters later. And that would be the last time the Oregon Trail would be played for several years.

That didn’t stop the teachers and students from being very excited about this entire computing network. Teachers were starting to learn to code and were making computer games and putting them on the network. They were making teaching aid games like math facts games. They were creating tools that would make the lives of teachers easier because now if a student needed extra help with math, they could send the student to the computer in the back of the classroom and they could get the extra help they needed. All while the teachers continued to teach the rest of the students again.

The Rise Of MECC

Dale LaFrenz’s idea became so successful, its love could not be contained.

Moving up, the State of Minnesota thought that what the Minneapolis School District and the TIES group had going was so fantastic, they created a group called MECC, the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium. In 1973, MECC would used the Minneapolis St. Paul project as a base for figuring out what computers all the schools in the entire state would need, what software they would use, what training was required, and how they would plan for future growth.

That’s where two of our stories heroes meet.

Dale LaFrenz and Don Rawitsch. Dale LaFrenz, who had all the experience with the Minneapolis St. Paul School District, came on board with MECC to help lead the charge. Don Rawitsch came to MECC via a much more interesting path.

The Vietnam War was going on in 1973 and Don’s name came up in the draft. But Don was a conscientious objector and wanted to do something else to support the nation than fighting in Vietnam. So the government gave him an option. Go to war or find something other than teaching that would benefit the community for the next two years. Using his school contacts, Don was introduced to an opportunity at MECC. That’s when the creator of the Oregon Trail game became an assistant and finally the story comes together.

Well, Don was amazed instantly at how much software they already had. Math, spelling, and science games all created by these Minnesota teachers, which reminded him of the software that he, Bill, and Paul had created just two years earlier. Remembering that he had printed out the Sacred Scrolls. He asked the folks at MECC, “Hey, do you guys need more software?” After hearing about his game, they said, “Heck yeah, we’d love it.” And over Thanksgiving break in 1974, Don retyped the entire game, adding stuff he wished he’d added from the beginning, and the new and improved Oregon Trail was on MECC’s Timeshare network for all of Minnesota schools to access.

MECC’s true function was to get a computer into every classroom in Minnesota. They had all kinds of great software for its teachers. They just had to figure out how to get a computer into the furthest reaches of schools throughout the state. They ultimately needed a scalable solution that would cut down on all the expense of bringing phone lines into each classroom and the costs of calling into the servers. Unbeknownst to them, a little company in Cupertino, California was about to solve all of their problems.

Steve Jobs Had a Problem

Remember, this is the story of two people who had a dream and the environment in which the dream became a reality. Which brings us to our second dreamer.

In April of 1976, a young Steve Jobs started a computer company called Apple. Like Dale LaFrenz, he also thought computers would revolutionize the world and he wanted to get one into every household and every classroom. He had created the greatest personal computer of its time. But he did have just one problem,’how to convince people they needed a computer’.

One of the ways Steve thought he would solve that problem is by getting a booth at the West Coast Computer Faire and finding retailers who would sell the Apple Computers directly to their customers. Perhaps the retailers, in their marketing, would help Apple understand how to better sell the computers themselves.

Remember how timing and environment play a role in every story?

The West Coast Computer Faire

Well, there weren’t many computer trade shows to go back to in 1977. So, the West Coast Computer Fair, which was talked about in every Computer News newsletter, attracted quite a bit of attention. In fact, MECC sent computer representatives to the West Coast Computer Faire because they still needed to figure out which computer they wanted every school in the state to have. They needed to find something that was scalable and would solve some of their problems.

And remember our radio electronics repair family, the Zuckmans of Minnesota? Well, by 1977, they’d opened their first retail store called Team Electronics, and they decided to go to the West Coast Computer Faire because they wanted to be able to offer the latest in technology to their customers.

And this is when the story really heats up as Mech, Apple, and the Zuckman family meet for the first time at the West Coast Computer Faire!!! And that brings us to the rest of the story. Here’s what came of their meeting.

MECC walked away from the computer show with five Apple computers. They were completely enamored with the idea of the scalable disc drive. Their biggest problem was solving how how they would get phone lines into every school and every classroom so the computers would work. And they had to figure out who would pay for the recurring, increasing, long-distance charges over time. Apple’s disc drive meant they could send their software on a disc to each school. The schools could share it amongst computers and they wouldn’t ever need to worry about hooking the computers up to phone lines, which meant a computer could be put on a cart and moved from one classroom to the next. reaching more kids.

The Zuckman family also fell in love with the Apple personal computer. They actually walked away from the show as the first Apple reseller in the world and have proudly displayed that distinction at Team Electronics Store ever since.

The computer fair was life-changing for Apple.

When Steve Jobs and his team met with representatives from MECC and heard about all the educational software that existed, it finally gave them the reason to persuade schools to get computers. Software became so important to Apple that 65 of its 70 acquisitions over the years would be for software. Steve Jobs knew immediately that software would sell the computer.

MECC spent the next year testing out these five Apple computers, getting teacher consensus, and getting ready to grow statewide. They wanted to get Apple computers into the hands of every school in the state of Minnesota right away. But that’s not necessarily how it happens for a state agency. They had to follow all the rules that state agencies follow about getting bids and allowing for fair competition. So in 1978, they put out a statewide proposal to any company that would provide 500 computers with scalable disc drives to MECC. Applications poured in from RadioShack and IBM and other big companies. This was a big contract for any company. But Steve Jobs and the Apple crew had no experience filling out state applications and conforming to all of their guidelines and regulations. However, they did have a secret weapon, the Zuckman family.

The Zuckmans had been bidding on government repair jobs and the like since 1941. They were no stranger to the process. So, Steve Jobs agreed to write a letter detailing their proposal and mailed it to the Zuckmans. And the Zuckmans agreed to fill out the application and submit it with the letter. The letter came in on the last day and with only a few minutes left before the application deadline set in, the Zuckman family showed up with a handwritten letter by Steve Jobs and an accurately filled out government application.

Not only did they win the contract, but it was Apple’s largest contract to date.

The Oregon Trail Result

In fact, Apple only sold 7,600 computers in 1978. total. Eager to make sure every school in Minnesota would have full knowledge of how to use the Apple computer, Apple sent their software expert, Rob Campbell, to train Mech how to use the computers so they could be effective in teaching all their state schools. Now, armed with software, word quickly spread from school district to school district to get an Apple computer with MECC software discs. With MECC’s hundreds of software programs, orders started pouring in from schools all over the country.

By 1983, 5,000 school districts, 1/3 of the US, had MECC software and purchased computers for their schools. And MECC, realizing it now had a national audience, started selling software subscriptions to school districts.

Apple sales skyrocketed from 7600 in 1978 to 35,000 in 1979.

In fact, MECC generated so much revenue, the state of Minnesota no longer needed to fund it. So the state turned MECC into a private for-profit corporation and just 2 years later it made $7 million in software sales. This in turn would grow and grow and in 1995 Softkey, a company headed by Shark Tank’s Kevin OReilly bought MECC for 370 million in stock.

The Zuckman’s Team Electronics retail store morphed into FirstTech and for 35 years they served as Minneapolis’s premier dealer of tech and education tech merchandise. Unfortunately, rising competition forced First Tech to close their doors on March 29th, 2014.

For Steve Jobs, 1/3 of the nation’s schools was not enough. He felt unless he helped make it faster, another generation of kids would miss out. So, Apple started a program called Kids Can’t Wait, with the goal of donating 80,000 computers to schools. Early in Apple’s life, they didn’t have the money to do this, so they pursued a way to get tax credits through Congress. It ultimately failed, but it did pass in the state of California, allowing Apple to donate 9,000 computers to California schools.

Over the next 14 years, the Apple 2 series sold more than 6 million units, until it was retired in October 15th, 1993.

The Oregon Trail Generation

This story is why we are commonly referred to as the Oregon Trail generation. No generation before or after experienced the coming of age of computers. Anyone prior to us didn’t experience computers in the classroom and anyone after us can’t remember a time they weren’t there.

This is the story of how the Oregon Trail became the most popular game in the world. This is the story of how Apple computers became a powerhouse. And this is the story of how computers got into the classroom.

That brings me back to what should the first sentence of the story really be. This story reminds me of the anthropologist Margaret Mead who was born in 1901 and died just one year after the West Coast Computer Faire. She studied human behavior, people like Dale LaFrenz, whose push created a movement that changed the face of America. Perhaps she should have penned the first line when she said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

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