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Title: Computer Pioneer Ed Roberts dies at 68 Post by: trekgeezer on April 02, 2010, 12:22:38 PM Most here probably haven't heard of Ed the man who invented the altair computer and gave Bill Gates his first job.
Henry Edward "Ed" Roberts (September 13, 1941 – April 1, 2010[1]) was an American engineer, entrepreneur and medical doctor who designed the first commercially successful personal computer in 1975.[2] He founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in 1970 to sell electronics kits to model rocketry hobbyists, but the first successful product was an electronic calculator kit that was featured on the cover of the November 1971 Popular Electronics.[3] The calculators were very successful and sales topped one million dollars in 1973.[4] A brutal calculator price war left the company deeply in debt by 1974. Roberts then developed the Altair 8800 personal computer that used the new Intel 8080 microprocessor. This was featured on the cover of the January 1975 Popular Electronics, and hobbyists flooded MITS with orders for this $397 computer kit. Bill Gates and Paul Allen joined MITS to develop software and Altair BASIC was Microsoft's first product. Roberts sold MITS in 1977 and retired to Georgia where he studied medicine and became a small-town doctor. Check out more about Ed at wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Roberts_%28computers%29 |