Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, Inc., was an American electronics company founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico that began manufacturing electronic calculators in 1971 and personal computers
Transistorized tracking light for model rockets. The product that launched MITS
Sales had reached $100,000 per month when this advertisement ran in March 1973.
Altair 8800 Computer with 8 circuit boards installed. The Altair floppy disk system below has a Pertec 8-inch drive.
Many companies made boards that could plug into the Altair / S-100 bus.
Altair 8800
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The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer introduced in 1974 by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems based on the Intel 8080 CPU. It was the first commercially successful personal computer. Interest i
Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems
…1973. A brutal calculator price war left the company deeply in debt by 1974. Roberts then developed the first commercially successful microcomputer, the Altair 8800, which was featured on the January 1975 cover of Popular Electronics. Hobbyists flooded MITS with orders for the $397 computer kit. Paul Allen and Bill…
January 1975 Popular Electronics with the Altair 8800 computer. This issue was released to newsstands on December 19, 1974, a week before Christmas.
A kit-built Altair 8800 computer with the popular Model 33 ASR (Automatic Send and Receive) Teletype as terminal