| Altair is either the eleventh or twelfth brightest star in the sky depending on whom you ask, and it is also the name of what most computer historians consider to be the first PC. The product debuted on the cover of the January 1975 issue of
Popular Electronics magazine, heralded by a headline that nicely summed up the Altair 8800's place in computing history: "World's First Minicomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models . . ."
The kit was sold by Albuquerque-based MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) and came with a 2MHz Intel 8080 CPU
and 256-bytes of RAM. The kit was expandable, accepting floppy diskette and tape drives, as well as extra memory and other accessories. There was no keyboard, and users programmed the device using a series of switches on the front of the case. The basic kit cost $395, although MITS also sold assembled Altairs for $495.
Adjusted for inflation that equals between $1,300 and $1,700 in 2000 dollars; to put it in perspective, though, minicomputers in 1975 sold for several thousand dollars.
Expandability came courtesy of the computer's Altair Bus (later called the S-100 bus), a standard that stood for more than five years and let hobbyists create custom systems. Several peripherals were available for the computer, including a floppy diskette
drive (which used 8-inch floppy disks), output devices, and DAC (digital-to-
analog) converters that let Altair owners use their computers to
control just about anything. An entire industry sprang up around the Altair to create add-on devices, software,
and even complete clone computer kits that competed directly with the Altair systems. The original Altairs didn't have monitors to display output, instead
relying on teletype machines. Programs were stored on paper tape and entered manually in binary
code by using the row of switches on the front of the computer. The only feedback users received, aside from teletype output, came from a row of flashing LEDs (light-
emitting diodes) on the front of the computer.
The Altair 8800 made computer technology accessible to hobbyists for the first time, igniting the fuse of the PC market that exploded
in later years. Prior to its release, anyone who wanted a computer had to cobble one together from individual parts ordered
from
a number of companies. This was both prohibitively expensive
and technically daunting, so the hobbyist market didn't really
take off until the Altair kit showed up to take care of those problems. (However, it took even seasoned hobbyists a lot
of work to assemble the kit).
Unfortunately for MITS, it was not prepared for the demand the Popular Electronics
article generated, and it was sold to Pertec in 1977 as competitors sprang up to fill the void in the market. Companies, such as Commodore, Tandy, and Apple, all started selling PCs in the 1970s and drove nearly all other PC manufacturers out of the market.
In the end, more than 10,000 Altair kits were sold, with many variants and eventual improvements over the original 8800 design. Despite this, Pertec eventually shut down the entire product line. MITS founder Ed Roberts left the company in 1977, shortly
after it was acquired, to become a physician.
As an aside, 1975 was also the year Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft (then spelled Microsoft), based on the Altair BASIC
programming language they developed for none other than the Altair 8800 and licensed to MITS, which had the distinction of being the
company's first licensee. |
