Altair 8800 Computer with 8-inch floppy disk system
Developer
MITS
Manufacturer
MITS
Release date
January 1975; 49 years ago (1975-01)
Introductory price
Kit: US $439($2500 in 2023) Assembled: US $621($3500 in 2023)
Units sold
25,000[1]
CPU
Intel 8080 @ 2 MHz
The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU.[2] Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics[3] and was sold by mail order through advertisements there, in Radio-Electronics, and in other hobbyist magazines.[4][5] According to Harry Garland, the Altair 8800 was the product that catalyzed the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s.[6] It was the first commercially successful personal computer.[7] The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become 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.[8][9]
The Altair 8800 had no built-in screen or video output, so it would have to be connected to a serial terminal (such as a VT100-compatible terminal) to have any output. To connect it to a terminal a serial interface card had to be installed. Alternatively to using a terminal Altair could be programmed using its front-panel switches.
^Reimer, Jeremy (2005-12-15). "Total share: 30 years of personal computer market share figures". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 2012-06-07. Retrieved 2021-11-27.
Jeremy Reimer (2012-12-07). "Total Share: Personal Computer Market Share 1975-2010". Jeremy Reimer.
^Rojas, Raúl (2001). Encyclopedia of computers and computer history. Chicago [u.a.]: Fitzroy Dearborn. ISBN 1-57958-235-4.
^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^Newscientist Sept 21 gallery: March of the outdated machines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.
^Dorf, Richard C., ed. The engineering handbook. CRC Press, 2004.
^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.
The Altair8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover...
Altair BASIC is a discontinued interpreter for the BASIC programming language that ran on the MITS Altair8800 and subsequent S-100 bus computers. It was...
generally considered to be the Altair8800, from MITS, a small company that produced electronics kits for hobbyists. The Altair8800 was introduced in a Popular...
co-founder Paul Allen, who worked at Honeywell in Boston, both saw the Altair8800 computer in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics for the first...
8800 may refer to: The year 8800, in the 9th millennium. NVIDIA GeForce 8800, a computer graphics card series The Altair8800, an early, experimental...
new product or company. The most famous issue, January 1975, had the Altair8800 computer on the cover and ignited the home computer revolution. Paul...
computer", the Altair8800 created by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS). Based on the 8-bit Intel 8080 Microprocessor, the Altair is widely...
well as the first high-level programming language available for the Altair8800 microcomputer. During the home computer craze during the late-1970s and...
Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with...
designed with a microprocessor. In the US the earliest models such as the Altair8800 were often sold as kits to be assembled by the user, and came with as...
and S-100 bus. It is a clone of its main competitor, the earlier MITS Altair8800. The IMSAI is largely regarded as the first "clone" microcomputer. The...
1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine. One month earlier the MITS Altair8800 microcomputer had been introduced in this same magazine. Les Solomon...
organizations; Apple BASIC was Apple's first software product. After the MITS Altair8800, microcomputers were expected to ship bundled with BASIC interpreters...
computers were among the first microcomputers ever sold, predating the Altair8800 by at least two years. The first series of Intellecs included the Intellec 4...
the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair8800, the first microcomputer. Allen bought the magazine and rushed to Currier...
2022-10-09. "Oldcomputers: Altair 8800b". Archived from the original on 2020-01-03. Retrieved 2019-12-10. Holmer, Glenn. Altair8800 loads 4K BASIC from paper...
joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. In 1975, the MITS Altair8800 was released based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw the...
1975, Steve Dompier, member of Homebrew Computer Club, programmed an Altair8800 computer to play Daisy as AM radio interference. In 1985, Christopher...
milestone in the home computer revolution along with the Mark-8 and Altair8800 computers. Sometimes the term was used generically for any interactive...
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