The Altair 8800, the computer that brought computing into homes and small businesses was created by Ed Roberts in 1974 at a time when computers were the preserve of academia, the military and some big corporations. Pre-dating the Apple and the IBM PC it was the very first "personal computer" and you could build it for yourself.

Without the Altair 8800 where would we be today? Ed Robert's minicomputer kit was a vital catalyst to today's technology, inspiring Bill Gates and Paul Allen to found Microsoft in order to write a BASIC interpreter for it, a story told recently in Bill Gates Shares The Code That Launched Microsoft.

While Intel had developed to the 8080 chip, it really didn't have much idea what to do with the all-new "microprocessor". It was too underpowered to be a computer and too expensive at $350 to be a toy. Ed Roberts, whose Albuquerque-based company MITS had been forced out of the calculator market by Texas Instruments, didn't see things that way and after getting Intel to lower the price as part of a special deal, he put together a machine that looked like everyone's dream of a computer. It had banks of switches and flashing lights that just looked impressive enough for customers to want one, even if it wasn't clear what they could do with it.

Many electronics enthusiasts, professionals and hobbyists had dreamed of building a computer - the ultimate electronic product - but they were still thwarted by the large number of discrete circuits needed for even the simplest computer. Ed Robert's solution was, rather than attempt to build the whole thing on one printed circuit board, to use a modular design.

The CPU was assembled on one card, the memory on another and the interface on yet another. The whole lot was connected together by a motherboard with four sockets. The bus that Ed Roberts introduced would become famous as the S100 bus, although it was little more than the basic control signals of the 8080 processor supplemented by a few necessary extras and 50 earth connections - making a total of 100 connections that give the bus its name. 

The success of the computer kit, which sold for $439, was due both to its design and to its marketing. Les Solomon, the editor of Popular Electronics magazine had been on the lookout for a computer project for some time and flew to Albuquerque to talk to Roberts and arranged for it to feature in the January issue - as long as the design was completed in time. About the only thing he didn't like about the project was its name.

Back in New York he spent hours trying to think up a good name and then he asked his 12 year old daughter. She was watching Star Trek at the time - then a new series - and so she suggested Altair, the star system that the Enterprise was heading for. As Roberts was a sci-fi fan he liked the name because it was also the planet in the classic sci-fi film Forbidden Planet (the one with Robbie the Robot in it!) That settled it - the new machine was christened the Altair 8800. Ironically the front cover photo was in fact an empty metal case as, although the prototype had been completed in time, it was lost in transit.

Fast forward 50 years and the Altair 8800 is legendary. You can read all about it in our history article, Altair - The First PC. 

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