 Ziff-Davis purchased "Creative Computing" in 1983 and closed the non-magazine endeavors.Prior to starting "Creative Computing", in the early 1970s David H. Ahl was working in the educational department of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) where he started publication of their "Edu" newsletter in the spring of 1971.He was surprised to find that the number of subscribers, which reached 20,000 after 18 months, was much larger than the 2,000 or 3,000 he predicted based on the number of DEC machines in educational settings.