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The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. [2] Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics [3] and was sold by mail order through advertisements there, in Radio-Electronics, and in other hobbyist magazines.
They had to hire extra people just to answer the phones. In February, MITS received 1,000 orders for the Altair 8800. The quoted delivery time was 60 days, but it was many more months before the machines were shipped. By August 1975, they had shipped over 5,000 computers. [33] The Altair 8800 computer was a break-even sale for MITS.
The MITS Altair 8800, the first commercially successful hobby computer, is released. An article in Popular Electronics (January 1975), described the computer and invited people to order kits. Despite the limited processing power, input/output system ( blinkenlights and toggle switches) and memory (256 bytes), around 200 were ordered on the ...
An Altair 8800 kit with 8 KB of memory and Altair BASIC cost only $995 in August 1975. In December 1974 Bill Gates was a student at Harvard University and Paul Allen worked for Honeywell in Boston. They saw the Altair 8800 computer in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics and knew it was powerful enough to support a BASIC interpreter. [66]
[30] [31] MCM/70: Intel 8008: 1974: Primarily designed to run APL. According to the IEEE Annals of Computer History, the MCM/70 is the earliest commercial, non-kit personal computer. [32] IBM 5100: 1975: An early portable computer with integrated monitor; the 5100 was possibly one of the first portable microcomputers using a CRT display. Sphere ...
On display are key items from the early era of computers (and even before) from ageing comptometers through the Altair 8800 to the ZX Spectrum and Apple II. The museum also holds vintage games consoles, peripherals, software and an extensive collection of computer manuals, magazines and other literature. It is home to the Megaprocessor, an ...
The Altair 8800, which began the personal computer revolution, was introduced in January 1975 with no hardware or software support for floppy disk or hard disk storage.. When Paul Allen travelled to the MITS factory in Albuquerque, New Mexico to demonstrate what would become Microsoft BASIC, he brought with him a punched paper tape of the code that he and Bill Gates had develo
The January 1975 cover of Popular Electronics featured Roberts' Altair 8800 computer. [30] Roberts asked Mims to write the Altair 8800 user’s manual in return for an assembled Altair, which Mims donated to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History together with many original MITS documents and his high school ...