The Computer Chronicles debuted as a national television program in the United States in the fall of 1983. The series was the brainchild of Stewart Cheifet, then the general manager at KCSM-TV, a public television station based in San Mateo, California, located in the heart of Silicon Valley. Cheifet originally launched Chronicles as a live, local program in 1981, which was hosted by Jim Warren, the co-founder of the West Coast Computer Faire, an annual computer convention based in San Francisco.