9 May
2023
9 May
'23
8:57 p.m.
On Tue, 9 May 2023 at 16:53, Sellam Abraham via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
*In November 1975, REA Express terminated operations and filed for
bankruptcy. During the railroad strike of October 1974, the first Altair
8800 microcomputer was lost. It had been shipped from Albuquerque to
Popular Electronics magazine in New York via REA and never arrived.*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Express_Agency
Very interesting. So it's now more plausible that a former REA employee
might have the prototype stuffed away in their garage somewhere.
I know that it's fun to believe that the prototype might still exist almost
50 years later, but given my experience with package shipping services I'd
say that it's infinitely more probable that it somehow ended up so damaged
that the shipping service just claimed that they "lost" it. After all,
what's the probability that someone working for a small-time shipping
service in the mid-'70s was going to have any idea about the value of a
hobbyist computer, let alone any inclination to save it for 50 years?
-Henry