Some History of Matrix Software By Michael Erlewine

in 1977 and this includedgeocentric, heliocentric, Equatorial,and Local Space (azimuthal)coordinates and then some, all in 8Kof RAM, which is 8192 bytes ofmemory space. A gigabyte or RAMtoday is something like a billionbytes of space. Go figure.I was soon programming everythingI could think of in astrology on myCommodore PET and telling otherastrologers about it too. Iencouraged my fellow astrologers todo what I was doing: get themselvesa computer and program it. Thisdidn‟t happen. Astrologers wantedcopies of my programs so theycould just get a computer and be offand running. I didn‟t blame them.Math and programming was not myfirst nature either. Of course Iobliged and pretty soon I wasspending most of my time copyingand verifying cassette tapes ofprograms I had written and puttingthem in the mail – very tediouswork. I didn‟t even charge for them.The demand got steadily greater formy programs.I was still barely supporting myfamily as it was and before long Ihad to make a decision and itactually was quite a spiritualexperience. It was almost like avoice spoke from inside sayingsomething like: You can stopsharing your programs and devoteyourself to the astrological researchyou love while you find ways tosupport your family or you candivide your time between researchand charging for your astrologyprograms and not have to struggleso much for work. The secondchoice seemed best and with that Iwas soon in business. I had tocharge from my programs and I did.I called my company “MatrixSoftware,” not after themathematical term „matrix‟ but afterthe word matrix meaning “womb” orbirth place. For me this was thebirthplace of astrological computing,and so it was for many. As it turnsout I was the first person to producecomputer programs onmicrocomputers and share themwith my fellow astrologers, at first forfree and later as a business which isstill going some thirty-three yearslater.I thought it was very funny whenone quite-famous astrologer (not tobe humiliated here) wrote me anasty letter telling me that I had noright to charge anything more for myastrology programs than the cost ofa cassette, mailer, and postage. Ofcourse this particular astrologer waskicking himself that he had no wayto cash in on what he could now seemight become popular. Thank youvery much!Photo: Matrix Magazine, Vol. 1