After high school, Philip Tubb joined fellow former computer club members Tim Gill and Rich Harman at the University of Colorado. Philip soon discovered the computer science classes were based almost entirely on mainframe computers, which he considered obsolete by that time. He dropped out after one semester to study programming independently. Late in 1975, Philip began discussing the idea of starting a company to make computer-related electronic products with John Ridges (who by then was a student at the University of Colorado). Colorado law at that time required an incorporator to be 21, and required at least three directors. Neither Philip nor John were 21 years old; Rich joined the project and signed the incorporation paperwork for "A L F Products Inc." in November 1975.ALF Products Inc., "Articles of Incorporation" Document 19871295108. Retrieved 2013-04-11. The three served as the board of directors at ALF through 1992. The name "ALF" was chosen from a list of assembly language instructions for the Hewlett-Packard computer. It stands for "rotate the A register Left Four bits".Hewlett-Packard, 1970, "2114B Computer, Volume One, Specifications and Basic Operation Manual", Section II, pg 2-8. Retrieved 2016-10-01. This particular instruction was chosen largely because the letters have no curves and would therefore be easy to draw with a plotter or other line-vector graphics device.
