The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975, based on the Intel 8080A CPU. Sold as a kit through Popular Electronics magazine, the designers intended to sell only a few hundred to hobbyists, and were surprised when they sold over ten times that many in the first month. Today the Altair is widely recognized as the spark that led to the personal computer revolution of the next few years: The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a de facto standard in form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC.

History

---

While serving at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force base, New Mexico, Ed Roberts and Forrest M. Mims III decided to use their electronics background to produce small kits for model rocket hobbyists. Roberts and Mims, along with Stan Cagle and Robert Zaller, founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in Roberts' garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and started selling radio transmitters and instruments for model rockets. In 1969 Roberts bought out the others and moved to a larger office, where he manufactured calculator kits for hobbyists. Mims assisted by writing manuals for some of the products in return for kits. In 1972, Texas Instruments developed their own calculator chip and started selling complete calculators at more than half the going rate. MITS was devastated by this, as were many other companies, and Roberts struggled to reduce his quarter-million dollar debt. With the release of the first 8-bit microprocessor, the Intel 8008, in 1972, and the more powerful 8080 in 1974, a number of hobbyists started designing microcomputer kits. In July 1974, one such design, Jonathan Titus' well thought-out Mark-8, based on the 8008, was advertised in Radio-Electronics magazine. The design was purely on paper, requiring the builder to track down the parts one at a time, a task that was basically impossible outside of California. Although the Mark-8 was not a success, the editors at Popular Electronics realized that someone was going to be the first to deliver a "real" kit, and decided they wanted to do it. At this point the story becomes somewhat less clear.

The design

Roberts looked for a deal on CPUs, and eventually talked Intel into supplying him with cosmetically blemished 8080's for $75, when they normally sold for $360. In fact the deal wasn't quite as shrewd as Roberts thought at the time; Intel chose the $360 price simply as a play on the famous IBM System/360 mainframe. The name finally decided upon for the computer came from Solomon's 12-year-old daughter, Lauren. She suggested Altair, which was the destination for the Starship Enterprise during an episode of Star Trek that she was watching.

More on [ Altair 8800 ]

Hardware News items, Blog posts | ZDNet

MobileTechRoundup show #140, iPhone apps, Opera Mobile 9.5 beta, and netbooks
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:59:57 -0700
We really tried to get away from talking just about the iPhone in MobileTechRoundup show #140, but when it is the hottest news in the mobile space it is tough. We did talk about some applications, iPhone 3G battery life, and a utility we would like to see on the...
A super-resolution x-ray microscope
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:06:12 -0700
Swiss researchers have developed a very-high-resolution x-ray microscope. Their approach combines two well-known microscopy techniques, coherent diffractive imaging CDI and scanning transmission x-ray microscopy STXM. As a result, the new system offers both the high penetration power of x-rays and high spatial resolution. This method will allow other scientists to...
Weekend Gadget Guidance: Benchmark your PC, free
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:45:30 -0700
Free application PC Wizard is a portable tool that analyzes and benchmarks your Windows PC. On the simple side, the 'Wiz gives you an in-depth look at your hardware and system specs. But for power users like those on ZDNet, PC Wizard's neat features -- such as...
Immobile Apple
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:42:18 -0700
It's 11:33 a.m. Friday. Approximately 66 and a half hours since Apple Support acknowledged receipt of my request for help on syncing calendar and contact data from my iMac to the "cloud,'' i.e., MobileMe servers wherever they are. Re-request sent after 48 hours. Still...
The potential fallout from Apple vs. Psystar
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:13:40 -0700
It's easy to think that when it comes to Apple vs. Psystar, that it's going to be a case of David vs. Goliath, only thing time Goliath pounds David into the ground like a nail. But this case could be a catalyst for questions being raised about Apple's own business...
Microsoft's online plan: Spend, spend, spend
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:44:47 -0700
If you think Microsoft's been spending like crazy in the online space, you ain't seen nothing yet. (And that's not counting when or if Microsoft's multi-billion-dollar bid for Yahoo's search business is ever consummated.) by Mary Jo Foley

Subscribe to Hardware RSS feed