Altair 8800
The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer introduced in 1974 by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) based on the Intel 8080 CPU.1 It was the first commercially successful personal computer.2 Interest in the Altair 8800 grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics.3 It was sold by mail order through advertisements in Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics, and in other hobbyist magazines.45 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.6 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.78
Printed 2026-10-23.
(echo:: @ ᯤ)
Footnotes
-
Rojas, Raúl (2001). Encyclopedia of computers and computer history. Chicago [u.a.]: Fitzroy Dearborn. ISBN 1-57958-235-4. ↩
-
Dorf, Richard C., ed. The engineering handbook. CRC Press, 2004. ↩
-
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 ↩
-
Newscientist Sept 21 gallery: March of the outdated machines ↩
-
Young, Jeffrey S. (1998). “Chapter 6: ‘Mechanics: Kits & Microcomputers’”. Forbes Greatest Technology Stories: Inspiring Tales of the Entrepreneurs. New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-24374-4. ↩
-
Garland, Harry (March 1977). “Design Innovations in Personal Computers”. Computer. 10 (3). IEEE Computer Society: 24. doi:10.1109/c-m.1977.217669. S2CID 32243439. There is little question that the current enthusiasm in personal computing was catalyzed by the introduction of the MITS Altair computer kit in January 1975. ↩
-
Ceruzzi, Paul E. (2003). A History of Modern Computing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p. 226. ISBN 0-262-53203-4. “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.” ↩
-
Freiberger, Paul; Swaine, Michael (2000). Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-135892-7. ↩