Altair 8800 (1975)
The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer plan from 1975, based on the Intel 8080 CPU and distributed as a mail-order kit through advertisements in Popular Electronics magazine. The designers planned to sell merely a few hundred to hobbyists, and were stunned when they sold thousands in the first month. Now the Altair is widely greeted as the spark that led to the PC revolution of the next several years:
While serving in the Air Force Ed Roberts, and Forrest M. Mims decided to employ their electronics background to develop small kits for model rocket hobbyists. In 1969, Roberts and Mims, launched Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in Roberts' garage in Albuquerque, and began distributing radio transmitters and instruments for model rockets.The model rocket kits were a moderate success but Mims and Cagle were losing interest in the kit business so they started formulating a calculator kit.
In 1974, one of the editors of Popular Electronics, Les Solomon, knew that MITS was working with an Intel 8080 based computer project and hoped Roberts could supply the project for the always popular January issue. The editors of Popular Electronics were looking for a complete kit in a professional looking enclosure. The January 1975 issue hit the newsstands a week before Christmas of 1974 and the kit was officially (if not yet practically) ready for sale.
The debut of the Altair 8800 occurred at precisely the right time. For a decade, colleges had required science and engineering majors to take attend a course in computer programming, generally using the FORTRAN or BASIC languages. This signified there was a considerable customer base who knew about computers. By 1974 calculators were a basic household item. Calculators and video games like Pong presented computer power to the general public. There were Intel 8008 based computer systems accessible in 1974 but they weren't powerful enough to run a high-level language like BASIC.
The standard unit had just 256 bytes of RAM and cost $395. This configuration rendered the small machine all but useless for any substantial problem solving. Even so the system was configured to be expandable with a bus that permitted plug in cards. The bus was to mark the standard for the next 5 years (S-100). Ed Roberts optimistically assured his banker that he could sell 800 computers and he acknowledged they needed to sell 200 over the next year simply to break even. When subscribers got the January issue of Popular Electronics, MITS was swamped with inquires and orders. In February MITS obtained 1,000 orders for the Altair 8800. MITS claimed to have sent out 2,500 Altair 8800s by the end of May. The figure was over 5,000 by August 1975.
In 1975, Paul Allen and Bill Gates (at the time a student at Harvard), decided to write a computer programming language to run on the Altair. They composed a scaled down version of BASIC, and hence began Microsoft.
The release of the Altair would kick start the PC industry, which would in turn open the door for the development of the High Speed Internet that would soon follow.