Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by Erickson wallace Page B
Authors: Erickson wallace
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the commercial calculator market. MITS was the first company in the United States to build calculator kits. Business was good. MITS quickly expanded to more than 100 employees. Then the bottom fell out. In the early 1970s, Texas Instruments entered the calculator market. Other semiconductor companies did the same. Pricing wars followed. MITS could no longer compete.
By 1974, MITS was more than a quarter of a million dollars in the red. Desperate to save his failing company, Roberts decided to take advantage of the new microprocessors and build computer hobby kits. Roberts knew that Intel’s 8008 chip was too slow. He was banking on the next generation of chip, known as the 8080. It came out in early 1974. The 8080 was an exciting successor. It was much faster and had much more brainpower than the 8008. The new chip could certainly support a small computer. Or so Roberts believed.
He decided he would sell his machine for $397. This was a mind-boggling figure, and Roberts knew it. After all, Intel’s 8080 chip alone was selling for $350. But Roberts had been able to browbeat Intel into selling him the chips in volume, at $75 apiece.
Although the machine had a price, it still lacked a name. David Bunnell, MITS technical writer, suggested the Orwellian- sounding Little Brother.” Roberts didn’t much care for the name. With the name still up in the air, Roberts and his small team of engineers went to work building a prototype machine. He was soon contacted by Les Solomon, technical editor of Popular Electronics. Solomon was looking for a good computer story to put on the cover of his magazine. He knew Roberts and had heard about his plan for a home computer kit. Solomon flew to Albuquerque to talk with Roberts. Could Roberts have the prototype ready by the end of the year? Roberts assured Solomon he could.
After he returned to New York, Solomon scratched his bald head for days trying to come up with a name for the computer. One night, he asked his 12-year-old daughter, who was watching “Star Trek” on television. Why not call it “Altair,” she said. That s where the Starship Enterprise was heading.
Roberts, a sci-fi fan, liked the name, too. Altair was also the name of the planet visited by the spaceship in the classic science fiction movie, Forbidden Planet.
Although Solomon’s daughter came up with the computer’s name, it was Roberts who coined the term “personal computer” as part of an ad campaign for Altair. “I was trying to convey a small machine you could afford to buy that didn’t sound like a toy,” he said.
Before Popular Electronics could publish the articles on the Altair, Solomon needed to see the prototype to test it and make sure it worked as advertised. Roberts shipped his only working model to New York City by rail. It never arrived. The world’s first home computer—lost in transit! Solomon was in a panic. It was too late to change the planned January 1975 cover. And there was not enough time to build another computer. MITS engineers hurriedly put together a metal shell with the proper, eye-catching switches and lights on the front and shipped the empty machine to New York. And that’s what appeared on the magazine’s cover. The magazine’s nearly half-million hobbyist- subscribers never knew—although they would soon learn that things didn’t always work right at MITS.
The article on the Altair explained that the computer had only 256 bytes of memory, although it had 18 slots for additional memory boards that could increase its capacity to about 4K, or 4,096 bytes. There was no screen or keyboard. Since no one had developed a high-level language for the 8080 microchip, the Altair could only be programmed in complex 8080 machine language. This was painstakingly accomplished by flipping the switches on the front panel. One flip of a switch equaled one bit of information. (A series of 8 bits equals a byte, or one character of ordinary language.) The Altair “talked” back by
By 1974, MITS was more than a quarter of a million dollars in the red. Desperate to save his failing company, Roberts decided to take advantage of the new microprocessors and build computer hobby kits. Roberts knew that Intel’s 8008 chip was too slow. He was banking on the next generation of chip, known as the 8080. It came out in early 1974. The 8080 was an exciting successor. It was much faster and had much more brainpower than the 8008. The new chip could certainly support a small computer. Or so Roberts believed.
He decided he would sell his machine for $397. This was a mind-boggling figure, and Roberts knew it. After all, Intel’s 8080 chip alone was selling for $350. But Roberts had been able to browbeat Intel into selling him the chips in volume, at $75 apiece.
Although the machine had a price, it still lacked a name. David Bunnell, MITS technical writer, suggested the Orwellian- sounding Little Brother.” Roberts didn’t much care for the name. With the name still up in the air, Roberts and his small team of engineers went to work building a prototype machine. He was soon contacted by Les Solomon, technical editor of Popular Electronics. Solomon was looking for a good computer story to put on the cover of his magazine. He knew Roberts and had heard about his plan for a home computer kit. Solomon flew to Albuquerque to talk with Roberts. Could Roberts have the prototype ready by the end of the year? Roberts assured Solomon he could.
After he returned to New York, Solomon scratched his bald head for days trying to come up with a name for the computer. One night, he asked his 12-year-old daughter, who was watching “Star Trek” on television. Why not call it “Altair,” she said. That s where the Starship Enterprise was heading.
Roberts, a sci-fi fan, liked the name, too. Altair was also the name of the planet visited by the spaceship in the classic science fiction movie, Forbidden Planet.
Although Solomon’s daughter came up with the computer’s name, it was Roberts who coined the term “personal computer” as part of an ad campaign for Altair. “I was trying to convey a small machine you could afford to buy that didn’t sound like a toy,” he said.
Before Popular Electronics could publish the articles on the Altair, Solomon needed to see the prototype to test it and make sure it worked as advertised. Roberts shipped his only working model to New York City by rail. It never arrived. The world’s first home computer—lost in transit! Solomon was in a panic. It was too late to change the planned January 1975 cover. And there was not enough time to build another computer. MITS engineers hurriedly put together a metal shell with the proper, eye-catching switches and lights on the front and shipped the empty machine to New York. And that’s what appeared on the magazine’s cover. The magazine’s nearly half-million hobbyist- subscribers never knew—although they would soon learn that things didn’t always work right at MITS.
The article on the Altair explained that the computer had only 256 bytes of memory, although it had 18 slots for additional memory boards that could increase its capacity to about 4K, or 4,096 bytes. There was no screen or keyboard. Since no one had developed a high-level language for the 8080 microchip, the Altair could only be programmed in complex 8080 machine language. This was painstakingly accomplished by flipping the switches on the front panel. One flip of a switch equaled one bit of information. (A series of 8 bits equals a byte, or one character of ordinary language.) The Altair “talked” back by
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