The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer introduced in 1974 by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) based on the Intel 8080 CPU. It was the first commercially successful personal computer.Dorf, Richard C., ed. The engineering handbook. CRC Press, 2004. Interest in the Altair 8800 grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics.Copyright catalogs at the Library of Congress. January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics was published on November 29, 1974. :File:Copyright_Popular_Electronics_1975.jpg It was sold by mail order through advertisements in Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics, and in other hobbyist magazines.Newscientist Sept 21 gallery: March of the outdated machines The Altair 8800 had no built-in screen or video output, so it would have to be connected to a serial terminal or teletype to have any output. To connect it to a terminal, a serial interface card had to be installed. Alternatively, the Altair could be programmed using its front-panel switches.
According to the personal computer pioneer Harry Garland, the Altair 8800 was the product that catalyzed the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. The computer bus designed for the Altair became a de facto standard in the form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC. "This announcement [Altair 8800] ranks with IBM's announcement of the System/360 a decade earlier as one of the most significant in the history of computing."
History
While serving at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Ed Roberts and Forrest M. Mims III decided to use their electronics background to produce small kits for model rocket hobbyists. In 1969, 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.
Calculators The model rocket kits were a modest success and MITS wanted to try a kit that would appeal to more hobbyists. The November 1970 issue of Popular Electronics featured the Opticom, a kit from MITS that would send voice over an LED light beam. As Mims and Cagle were losing interest in the kit business, Roberts bought his partners out and began developing a calculator kit. Electronic Arrays had just announced the EAS100, a set of six large scale integrated (LSI) circuit chips that would make a four-function calculator. The MITS 816 calculator kit used the chipset and was featured on the November 1971 cover of Popular Electronics. This calculator kit sold for , or $275 assembled. Forrest Mims wrote the assembly manual for this kit and many others over the next several years. As payment for each manual he often accepted a copy of the kit.
The calculator was successful and was followed by several improved models. The MITS 1440 calculator was featured in the July 1973 issues of Radio-Electronics. It had a 14-digit display, memory, and square root function. The kit sold for and the assembled version was . The cover story is for the MITS 1700 waveform generator. An ad for the MITS 1200, a battery operated handheld calculator, is on page 15. MITS later developed a programmer unit that would connect to the 816 or 1440 calculator and allow programs of up to 256 steps.
In 1972, Texas Instruments developed its own calculator chip and started selling complete calculators at less than half the price of other commercial models. MITS and many other companies were devastated by this, and Roberts struggled to reduce his quarter-million-dollar debt.
Test equipment In addition to calculators, MITS made a line of test equipment kits. These included an IC tester, a waveform generator, a digital voltmeter, and several other instruments. To keep up with the demand, MITS moved into a larger building at 6328 Linn NE in Albuquerque in 1973. They installed a wave soldering machine and an assembly line at the new location.
Popular Electronics
In January 1972, Popular Electronics merged with another Ziff-Davis magazine, Electronics World. The change in editorial staff upset many of their authors, and they started writing for a competing magazine, Radio-Electronics. In 1972 and 1973, some of the best construction projects appeared in Radio-Electronics.
In 1974, Art Salsberg became editor of Popular Electronics. It was Salsberg's goal to reclaim the lead in electronics projects. He was impressed with Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter (Radio Electronics, September 1973) article and wanted computer projects for Popular Electronics. Don Lancaster did an ASCII keyboard for Popular Electronics in April 1974. They were evaluating a computer trainer project by Jerry Ogden when the Mark-8 8008-based computer by Jonathan Titus appeared on the July 1974 cover of Radio-Electronics. The computer trainer was put on hold and the editors looked for a real computer system. (Popular Electronics gave Jerry Ogden a column, Computer Bits, starting in June 1975.) "The breakthrough in low-cost microprocessors occurred just before Christmas 1974, when the January issue of Popular Electronics reached readers … "
One of the editors, Les Solomon, knew MITS was working on an Intel 8080 based computer project and thought Roberts could provide the project for the always popular January issue. In a last-ditch attempt to save MITS, Roberts decided to do something that was impossible at the time: create a personal computer kit for hobbyists. The TV Typewriter and the Mark-8 computer projects were just a detailed set of plans and a set of bare printed circuit boards. The hobbyist faced the daunting task of acquiring all of the integrated circuits and other components. The editors of Popular Electronics wanted a complete kit in a professional-looking enclosure.
Ed Roberts and his head engineer, Bill Yates, finished the first prototype in October 1974 and shipped it to Popular Electronics in New York via the Railway Express Agency. However, it never arrived due to a strike by the shipping company. Solomon already had a number of pictures of the machine and the article was based on them. Roberts got to work on building a replacement. The computer on the magazine cover is an empty box with just switches and LEDs on the front panel. The finished Altair computer had a completely different circuit board layout than the prototype shown in the magazine. The January 1975 issue was registered on November 29, 1974, and began appearing on newsstands on December 19, 1974—during the week before Christmas of 1974—at which point the kit was officially (if not yet practically) available for sale.
The name The typical MITS product had a generic name like the "Model 1440 Calculator" or the "Model 1600 Digital Voltmeter". Ed Roberts was busy finishing the design and left the naming of the computer to the editors of Popular Electronics.
One explanation of the Altair name, which editor Les Solomon later told the audience at the first Altair Computer Convention (March 1976), is that the name was inspired by Les's 12-year-old daughter, Lauren. "She said why don't you call it Altair – that's where the Enterprise is going tonight.""Les Solomon entertained a curious audience with anecdotes about how it all began for MITS, The name for MITS' computer, for example, was inspired by his 12-year-old daughter. She said why don't you call it Altair -- that's where the Enterprise is going tonight." The Star Trek episode is probably "Amok Time", as this is the only one from The Original Series which takes the Enterprise crew to Altair (Six).
Another explanation is that the Altair was originally going to be named the PE-8 (Popular Electronics 8-bit), but Les Solomon thought this name to be rather dull, so Les, Alexander Burawa (associate editor), and John McVeigh (technical editor) decided that: "It's a stellar event, so let's name it after a star." McVeigh suggested "Altair", the twelfth brightest star in the sky. Salsberg states that the Altair was named by John McVeigh
Intel 8080 Ed Roberts had designed and manufactured programmable calculators and was familiar with the microprocessors available in 1974. He thought the Intel 4004 and Intel 8008 were not powerful enough (in fact several microcomputers based on Intel chips were already on the market: the Canadian company Microsystems International's CPS-1 built-in 1972 used a MIL MF7114 chip modeled on the 4004, the Micral marketed in January 1973 by the French company R2E and the MCM/70 marketed in 1974 by the Canadian company Micro Computer Machines); the National Semiconductor IMP-8 and IMP-16 required external hardware; the Motorola 6800 was still in development. So he chose the 8-bit Intel 8080. Wayne Green visited MITS in August 1975 and interviewed Ed Roberts. The article has several paragraphs on the design of the Altair 8800. At that time, Intel's main business was selling memory chips by the thousands to computer companies. They had no experience in selling small quantities of microprocessors. When the 8080 was introduced in April 1974, Intel set the single unit price at ($ in ). "That figure had a nice ring to it," recalled Intel's Dave House in 1984. "Besides, it was a computer, and they usually cost thousands of dollars, so we felt it was a reasonable price." Ed Roberts had experience in buying OEM quantities of calculator chips and he was able to negotiate a price ($ in ) for the 8080 microprocessor chips. "Roberts was sure he could get the chip price much cheaper, and he did. Intel knocked the price down to .""But because the 8080 sold for in single quantities, few people could afford it. Ed Roberts bought the chips in large quantities and was able to get a substantial discount…" Seizing the opportunity to be ahead of computers of the time, MITS began development of the Altair 8800 in the summer of 1974, about 2 months after the release of the Intel 8080.
Intel made the Intellec-8 Microprocessor Development System that typically sold for a very profitable . It was functionally similar to the Altair 8800 but it was a commercial grade system with a wide selection of peripherals and development software. "Intel Corporation has announced that an interactive display console and highspeed line printer are now available for the Intellec MDS microcomputer development system. … The display console costs and the printer in quantities of 1 to 9. Delivery is in 30 days. Price of the basic Intellec MDS with 16K bytes of RAM memory, including interfaces and resident software for operating the peripherals, is ." Customers would ask Intel why their Intellec-8 was so expensive when that Altair was only . Some Intel salesmen told their customers that MITS was getting cosmetic rejects or otherwise inferior chips. In July 1975, Intel sent a letter to its sales force stating that the MITS Altair 8800 computer used standard Intel 8080 parts. The sales force should sell the Intellec system based on its merits and that no one should make derogatory comments about valued customers like MITS. The letter was reprinted in the August 1975 issue of MITS Computer Notes. Intel letter to its sales force. "We wish to clarify any misconception that may exist in your minds regarding the MITS ALTAIR system. This product is designed around the Intel Standard Data Sheet 8080 family." The "cosmetic defect" rumor has appeared in many accounts over the years although both MITS and Intel issued written denials in 1975. "Ed Roberts was able to get around this problem by obtaining a supply of cosmetic reject chips for about 1/3 the retail price."
The launch