Altair 8800, the first personal computer to make it big

By August 1975, 5,000 copies of the Altair 8800 had been sold. It had been more than half a year since the machine had gone on sale, initially as a niche product. But it soon gained popularity among enthusiasts of computers, which had until that point been contained in massive metal closets. The first personal computer had arrived, and at a competitive price point. Its success created the perfect breeding ground for the birth of companies that would bring computing into the home.

The Altair 8800 was born at a moment when microelectronics were exploding. The computing era had begun during the final stages of the Second World War. At that point, the machines that were assembled took up entire rooms. By the 1970s, those computers had evolved, but they were still huge, expensive and difficult to operate. They were reserved for large companies that saw economic benefit in the machines’ potential for calculations and their ability to process accounting elements.

In 1971, a processor arrived that heralded winds of change. That was the Intel 4004, which became the market’s first microprocessor. Its technological feat consisted of containing an entire CPU in a single integrated circuit, one chip. Until then the component, which is considered the brain of the computer, was composed of dozens of integrated circuits. The advance opened the door to the miniaturization of the basic components of a computer. But the chip was designed only for electronic calculations.

Three years later, another leap forward took place with the introduction of the Intel 8008 chip. It was created with new architecture and had much more memory, was faster and already designed with the personal computer in mind. It didn’t take long for electronics enthusiasts of the time to make use of it.

The fastest of them, and the one who launched the most compelling product of the time, was Henry Edward Roberts, who ran a company called MITS. Neither of those two names are known today outside of nostalgic computer science circles. But Roberts had created a company with dozens of employees that sold every electronic calculator it could assemble. Revenue poured in, until large companies realized the market opportunity, started producing cheaper products — and MITS’ debts started piling up.

When the Intel 8008 appeared, Roberts decided to create a personal computer as a solution to his company’s financial problems and as a way to pursue an old teenage dream. The pioneer, at a little over 30 years old, had been picking apart electronic devices beginning at a young age, when he started snooping around the merchandise his father brought home from his job repairing medical instruments.

In just nine months, MITS (short for the hardly sexy name Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) built the Altair 8800. In January 1975, the dazzling personal computer was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics, kicking off a craze. The machine, created by Roberts and his team, was equipped with Intel’s brand-new microprocessor with 8-bit capacity and a 2-MHz frequency, and had a 256-byte RAM memory card, expandable to 64 KB. It was also priced well below other personal computers on the market.

The Altair 8800 sold for $439 unassembled for the buyer who could put its pieces together, or for $621 completely assembled. It was most commonly sold as a kit, with its components disconnected, a puzzle that only the most skilled could solve. Once that work was done, the result was a box with a front panel replete with light-emitting diodes and connections. Through them, the user gave instructions to the machine and read its response in lights. It would be some time before peripherals, such as a monitor and keyboard, were introduced to make it easier to use.

It was not easy to operate, and you couldn’t rightly call it a “low cost” product. In today’s currency, its models sold for $2,500 and $3,500. But it was much more economic and usable than the monstrous computers that had been previously produced. Thanks to this, many people were able to get their hands on a personal computer for the first time.

The machine wasn’t for everyone, but it was for the era’s true techies, those who tinkered with electronic calculators and enjoyed opening up those precursors to computers, who dreamed of inventing their own machines. Back then, there were already many of these early computing enthusiasts, and Roberts’ company received hundreds of purchase orders, an avalanche of requests.

In Boston, two friends quickly saw the opportunities the Altair offered. Bill Gates, who was studying at Harvard, and Paul Allen, a corporate programmer, thought that the machine could benefit from simple software, to be able to reach a wider public. And, that they could benefit economically from positioning themselves at the crest of a wave that was about to break.

Gates and Allen got in touch with Roberts and told him that they could develop an interpreter for the Altair. It would be a program that translated instructions written in a programming language that the computer could not read into instructions that it could understand, thus making it easier to program. Roberts agreed, and the two young men worked at lightening speed to deliver on their promise.

After their demonstration, Roberts agreed to distribute the software with his Altair 8800. So was born the Altair BASIC, which allowed the machine to receive instructions in BASIC, a language that had been developed in the 1960s that would soon experience explosive growth. The product also marked the birth of Microsoft. Gates left school, and Allen, his job, in order to focus on what would later become the biggest thing in the personal computing industry — on the software side, that is.

The model also captured the interest of another duo who would prove key in bringing computing into homes. Steve Wozniak says that it was after he got his hands on a kit for the first Altair 8800 that he had the idea to create the Apple I. That lightbulb went on during a meeting with a group of fellow electronics and computing enthusiasts. Wozniak shared his advances during the group’s periodic meetings, and talked about his progress with his friend Steve Jobs.

Between the two of them, they realized the potential importance of a personal computer that was easier to use than the Altair 8800. Little by little, they improved their computer’s prototype and in 1976, the Apple I went on sale, to great success. Jobs got suppliers to finance the purchase of components to increase production, and they began to make money. They didn’t have to think twice about the name of their new company: it was Apple. Nor did they rack their brains over the moniker of their next model, which they named Apple II. It came with a keyboard, color screen and speaker.

The frenzy continued. Personal computers from Commodore, IMSAI, Atari, and the British company Arcon hit the market. The tech giant of the time, IBM, found itself drawn into a rapidly growing sector. The PC — personal computer — was born, a concept that hadn’t existed just a few years earlier.

As for the Altair 8800, it had its moment of glory in 1975. Shortly afterward, Roberts, tired of his managerial responsibilities at MITS, sold his company and bought a farm in Georgia. In a dramatic turn in his life, he studied medicine and became a rural doctor until the end of his days. He died of a prolonged case of pneumonia in 2010. During his hospitalization, nurses and doctors must have been astonished when the world’s richest man, Bill Gates, showed up to visit him.

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