The MITS Altair 8800 holds an important place in technology history as one of the first personal computers available to hobbyists. Released in 1975 by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the Altair 8800 kicked off a computing movement that shaped the modern digital world.
This in-depth history explores the Altair‘s origins, technical details, community impact, and lasting legacy across 2500+ words. Let‘s unpack the riveting story behind one of the most pivotal machines ever built.
From Model Rockets to Microcomputers: MITS Is Born
The roots of the Altair trace back to the model rocket hobby. In the late 1960s, Ed Roberts and Forrest Mims bonded over a shared passion for amateur rocketry. As an electronics tinkerer, Roberts realized tracking telemetry from model rockets could further the hobby. He teamed up with fellow Air Force veterans Stan Cagle and Bob Zaller to found Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in 1969.
The early MITS team leveraged their experience building Air Force missile tracking systems. Their first products included sensors and transmitters for model rockets to measure flight characteristics like acceleration and rotation. In 1971, with investment from Air Force colleagues, Roberts steered MITS into a new direction: electronic calculator kits.
Affordable Kits and the Opticom Device Set the Stage
MITS had some success selling an analog transistor circuit kit for hobbyists to build a basic 4-function calculator. But their digitally-controlled MITS 816 kit made waves in 1971. Priced at $179–cheap for the era–it let hobbyists construct a feature-rich scientific calculator at home.
Around this time, MITS developer Stan Cagle built the Opticom, an innovative device that transmitted audio over infrared light. Though the Opticom didn‘t pan out commercially, it demonstrated the creative engineering talent brewing at 1970s-era MITS. Roberts knew his team could deliver a breakthrough digital kit at the right price point.
The MITS 8080: Prelude to Greatness
Ed Roberts closely followed Intel‘s work in microprocessor technology during the early 1970s. In 1974, MITS licensed Intel‘s new 8080 chip to create a computer kit with unprecedented affordability and programmability.
The MITS 8080 kit came with 1 kilobyte of RAM and used punched tape for program input. It didn‘t make much commercial impact due to limited expansion capabilities. Yet the experience clearly illustrated the market desire for an even more powerful and customizable computer construction kit.
Altair 8800: The First PC for Hobbyists Arrives
When the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics landed featuring MITS’s audacious new “Altair 8800” computer on the cover, a generation of budding technologists caught fire with excitement. The Altair 8800 marked a paradigm shift, bringing programmable computing out of corporate and university labs onto kitchen tables nationwide.
At its core, the Altair 8800 used Intel‘s 8080 CPU just like its predecessor, running at 2 MHz. But the open 100-line bus structure supported modular add-on boards to extend the system. And with onboard toggle switches and LED lights for input and output, the promise of complete customization electrified hobbyists and hackers.
The base system sold for just $439 as a kit–barebones, but infinitely extensible. Even fully assembled, the Altair 8800 stayed under $650. Suddenly almost anyone could bootstrap their own personal computer straight from the pages of Popular Electronics.
Chaos, Community, and the Need for Software
MITS struggled to fulfill the crushing early demand. Extreme parts shortages left stacks of incomplete Altair kits piled around their Albuquerque offices. Crafty owners coped by creating expansion cards, memory boards, I/O interfaces and more to fill availability gaps. This kickstarted an entire cottage industry of Altair hardware add-ons that tested the system‘s open architecture to the limits.
But without programs to make it useful, the raw Altair box had glaring weakness. Ed Roberts rejected the idea of selling software, wanting to encourage open development. Yet no support existed for translating software into the obscure machine language coded on the Altair‘s front panel.
Of the many enthusiasts eager to shape this computer revolution, one had the skills to bridge that software gap: 19-year-old Harvard student Bill Gates.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen Bring BASIC to the Party
Bill Gates instantly grasped the epochal nature of the Altair 8800 upon seeing it on the Popular Electronics cover. He called Ed Roberts to pitch writing a BASIC programming language interpreter for the machine–a natural combination given Gate‘s history developing BASIC for early PCs as a teen.
Roberts invited Gates to demonstrate his language at MITS offices in Albuquerque. Gates didn‘t actually have a working Altair BASIC version, but leveraged old school chutzpah (and partner Paul Allen‘s coding prowess) to promise delivery shortly. The gambit worked. Roberts hired Gates and Allen to finish Altair BASIC in just 8 weeks–averting a cross-country trek back to Harvard for Gates.
True to their word, that spring Gates unveiled 4K MITS Altair BASIC on an Altair 8800 to raves from hobbyists clamoring for usable software. Sales took off shortly after its MITS release. And Gates & Allen soon founded a little startup of their own called Microsoft on the revolution they helped ignite.
Clones, Competition & Industry Influence of the Altair 8800
The design ethos behind the Altair 8800 catalyzed waves of creativity that shaped the entire personal computer business over following years. Its defiantly open archetype forced IBM to rethink rigorously controlled approaches with 1981‘s open architecture IBM PC.
But in the short term, cloners cannibalized MITS‘s market. By 1976 IMSAI, Polymorphic Systems, and other companies sold unlicensed workalikes of the Altair 8800 often cheaper than MITS‘s kits. And rivals like Apple took advantage of hardware limitations in the original MITS machines as motivation to build better consumer computers.
Yet the Altair‘s runaway early success ensured its legacy. Over 10,000 units shipped in just over a year, feeding revolutionary energy into multiple startups staffed by ex-Altair tinkerers. And the Altair Users Group formed quickly, connecting hobbyists now able to innovate collaboratively on serious computing projects.
No restrictions on usage meant early Altairs appeared in remarkable places. Interactive arts group La Mamelle connected their San Francisco loft with Altair 8800s in 1975 for advanced art installations. An Altair administrators could access from home also managed basic functions for country star Conway Twitty‘s Arkansas concert tour in 1976!
Evolution of the Altair 8800 Models and Configurations
MITS iterated frequently on Altair 8800 models given the open nature of the kits. They launched the original design in several configurations defined mostly by the onboard memory:
- Altair 8800: no memory
- Altair 8800a: 1K RAM
- Altair 4K: base 4K static RAM
- Altair 8K: 8K static RAM
- Altair 8Kbs: 8K basic RAM + serial port
Owners could expand well beyond those limits with add-on memory cards supporting up to 64K. And the S-100 bus hosted modules for I/O functions like video terminals, floppy disk controllers, prototyping cards, and much more.
Later Altair revisions featured incremental improvements before the system was discontinued:
- Altair 680 (1976): Used Motorola 6800 CPU instead of the Intel 8080
- Altair 680b (1976): Added more internal ports, operations speed
Overall ~10,000 Altair 8800s sold from 1975-1978 in total based on serial numbers tracked by enthusiasts. MITS itself was acquired by Pertec in 1977, who ended the Altair line shortly after.
Lasting Impact: The Altair Launches Many Careers & Industries
It‘s astounding to tally the careers and fortunes forged in the white-hot fervor of innovation surrounding MITS and the Altair 8800 in the 1970s.
Microsoft is one obvious success story, along with smaller software firms like MicroPro International. On the hardware front, computer pioneers like Lee Felsenstein cut their teeth writing Altair documentation. Card manufacturers Cromemco and Vector Graphics got started fixing Altair parts shortages. And radio enthusiasts Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs sold "blue boxes" phone phreaking devices to raise startup funds…for a little operation called Apple Computer.
But the Altair‘s largest legacy lives on through the vast, global maker movement it ignited. Today‘s $5 Raspberry Pi microcomputers trace a direct lineage back to 1975 where the Altair 8800 first opened hobbyist hacking from basements and garages out to the open marketplace.
Layered on that foundation, Tinkerers now spur world-changing innovation in robotics, drones, IoT devices, virtual reality, self-driving vehicles, and even cryptocurrency mining rigs. The Altair 8800 sparked an insatiable thirst for personal technology creativity that will not be quenched anytime soon. Because the human urge to build games, gadgets, tools–and magic–on affordable, extensible hardware won‘t be denied. Not when we carry access to that creative power in our pockets.
The Altair 8800 gave us the early permission to dream digitally we needed. And today we stand on the shoulders of giants named Ed Roberts, Bill Gates and so many daring souls who brought accessible computing out of locked rooms into our eager hands.
So here‘s to the pioneers at MITS who first opened the gates. The Altair 8800 breached the walls of the mainframe fortress. And the PC revolution army that marched out forever transformed our world.
