On December 19, 1974, exactly 45 years ago, it was launched on the American market the first personal computer in history. He was called MITS Altair 8800 and it cost dollars 439 in the already assembled version, 397 in kit. Warning: we are not talking about the first computer, which is a few decades older, but about the first personal computer, i.e. a family diffusion device, characterized by small size e affordable price.
In fact, the MITS Altair 8800 – developed by Micro Instrumentation & Telemetry Systems, a US company based in Albuquerque, New Mexico – put an end to the era in which the word "computer" was synonymous with huge and very expensive equipment, accessible only to companies, and ushered in the era ofmass computing.
Of course, looking at it through today's eyes, the MITS Altair 8800 looks like a primitive instrument: barely 256 Bytes of Ram (which is now calculated in giga, i.e. millions of bytes) e a switch interface to program in binary code, with the result of the processing visible only through a series of flashing LEDs on the front panel. He had nothing automatic, to the point that to turn it on you had to enter a sequence of instructions by hand.
As for the name, the reference is to one star in the constellation Aquila. An unconfirmed anecdote tells that Ed Roberts, owner of Micro Instrumentation & Telemetry Systems, had his daughter choose the name of the computer, who was inspired by an episode of Star Trek seen that evening. And in that episode we were talking about the star Altair.
