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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Thursday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week –
01/25/06 |
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The PC is
31 years old this month .... Happy Birthday !
Here’s the history: History
of the Microcomputer Revolution - Part
5 - The world's 1st Commercially
Available Microcomputer In
January 1975, Popular Electronics magazine's cover featured a picture of the
Altair 8800 computer - the world's first microcomputer which used the new
Intel 8080 processor - sold mail order by a tiny company in Albuquerque, New
Mexico. This company's name was MITS - which stood for Model Instrumentation
Telemetry Systems - and its owner was a fellow named Ed Roberts who had
previously written some articles for the magazine. Ed
Roberts' company built electronic equipment, and had fallen onto hard times
and was a 1/4 million dollars in debt to his bank. He sold electronics kits, calculators ,
but he realized that the new Intel chip could have the capability to be used
in an actual computer. Faced with financial ruin, Roberts decided he would
make a last ditch attempt to save his business by selling a complete computer
in kit form, based on the new Intel 8080. He contacted Popular Electronics
magazine, and they agreed to do the cover story on it. Roberts didn't even
have a name for his computer. He asked his daughter what would be a good
high-tech sounding name, and she suggested Altair - which was the name of a
star in the popular tv series Star Trek. Through
shrewd negotiations, he was able to offer the kit for $ 397. Intel agreed to
sell him cosmetically blemished chips for $ 75 each, instead of the going
price of $ 360. This price was somewhat of an in-house joke at Intel, because
they decided to price their new microprocessors at $360 to poke fun at the
IBM 360 Mainframe computers, which cost millions of dollars. Roberts
estimated if he got lucky he would sell enough computer kits to keep his
business afloat while he looked for other revenue sources, possibly 200 kits
in a year. Once the article appeared, the phones started ringing, and Ed
Roberts and the rest of the world was soon amazed at how many people wanted
to have their own computer. People sent checks in sight unseen - completely
on the faith they would some day receive their kit in the mail. MITS's cash
flow flip-flopped virtually over night - and over time they would receive
thousands of orders for the Altair 8800. Some fanatics even drove to
Albuquerque and camped out in the parking lot to wait for their kits. And what
were people waiting for? Quite literally for a computer in absolutely
completely disassembled bare bones kit form. To build this thing you'd have
to be an electronics technician - it would take hundreds of hours - and after
it was built it only had 256 characters of memory, no keyboard, no monitor,
no permanent memory, and then you had to be a computer programmer to program
it in machine language; zeros and ones. What could you do with it ? Hardly anything. But it was a real computer; a
personal computer that people could own - and they loved it. And this
barebone kit, along with a connection to Washington state – Launched
the Microcomputer revolution. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2005 MTA Micro Technology
Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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