Altair - A different perspective

From: Doug Yowza <yowza_at_yowza.com>
Date: Fri Aug 14 14:03:38 1998

On 14 Aug 1998, Frank McConnell wrote:

> Here's what is significant about MITS and the Altair 8800:
>
> It arrived on the scene with a price that firmly fixed in lots of
> folks' heads the idea that "I can own a computer." And it was
> obviously a useful computer that could be expanded to do real work
> just like the real computer in the fishbowl at the office, not
> something that could only be appreciated through the lights and
> switches on its front panel.

Exactly, the Altair helped kick-off the hobbiest movement by being cheap.
The Mark-8 did this earlier, but it was so slow and buggy that it was
pretty much a non-starter. The Altair was an improvement, but it was also
pretty much a non-starter that fizzled after about 10,000 units. The
Altair was the grandfather of the S-100 bus and CP/M, both of which
fizzled and left only a minor mark on MS-DOS, which didn't fizzle.

Low prices, enabled by the microprocessor, is one of the elements that got
us to where we are today. A high-degree of interactivity is another.
Computer graphics is another. The desktop form-factor is also a strong
survivor. So, if somebody were really looking at collecting Altairs as the
machine that "started it all", I think they have been misled and would be
better off collecting the IBM PC, early Apples, early HP desktops, the
PDP-8, and all of the PDP-1's they can find :-)

If they are looking for a machine that heavily influenced the virtually
extinct hobbiest movement and figured prominently in the corporate history
of Microsoft, then they're right on the mark with the Altair 8800.

-- Doug
Received on Fri Aug 14 1998 - 14:03:38 BST