Altair
The Altair 8800 computer was a small computer introduced in December 1974 by Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems (MITS) of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is considered by many to have been the first commercially successful personal computer. Edward H. Roberts, the founder of MITS, designed the Altair to replace the company's failed calculator business. Working with his friend Les Soloman, who was looking for a small computer to promote, Roberts sought to build a personal computer that was expandable like the new business minicomputers, contained individual circuit boards that could communicate internally, and would sell for less than $500. The name "Altair" came from Soloman's 12-year-old daughter, Lauren, who suggested it after watching the Star Trek episode "Amok Time" (original series), in which the crew of the starship Enterprise travels to the planet Altair 6.
The Altair was sold primarily in kit form through mail-order computer catalogs. It was based on a 2 MHz Intel 8080 chip (8-bit microprocessor), possessed 256 bytes of random access memory and 1 KB of hard-drive memory, used 6,000 transistors, received input through a set of 25 front-panel toggle switches, and displayed output through 36 light-emitting diodes. MITS originally sold the Altair for $397 as an unassembled kit and $497 fully assembled. The computer appeared on the January 1975 cover of the magazine Popular Electronics with the heading "World's First Minicomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models". The demand for the microcomputer kit was immediate, unexpected, and overwhelmed the small company: 4,000 customers ordered the Altair within three months. Even though MITS sold many units that did not actually work, buyers were mostly computer hobbyists and would-be computer programmers who "fiddled" with them until they did work. Noting this demand, numerous small companies began producing similar computers for the home computer market.
A customer who successfully assembled their Altair found that it lacked a monitor, keyboard, software, and printer. In order to enter programs or data, the user had to set the toggle switches on the front, and all programming had to be performed in the machine code of binary digits (1s and 0s). Even when the computer worked, temporary storage was limited, and information on the hard drive was lost when the user changed programs or when the computer was turned off. Some software eventually became available when recent college dropouts Bill Gates and Paul Allen provided the Altair with the first computer language written for a personal computer, a rewritten version of BASIC (Beginners' All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). Both men later worked for Roberts but left in 1976 after informing Roberts (who did not listen) that MITS and the Altair computer were in deep trouble. Gates and Allen also wanted to devote more time to their fledging company Micro-Soft (later renamed Microsoft). Under increasing financial and competitive pressures, Roberts sold MITS in 1977 for $6 million.
The Altair is generally thought to have initiated the tremendous popularity of personal computers, as well as inspiring many computer enthusiasts who would later establish companies to produce computer hardware and software. Even though the Altair was only manufactured for a few years, it jump-started the market for personal computers and pioneered the development of today's gigantic personal computer industry.
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