Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

I have my own ridiculous ad-hoc hypothesis on this.. Both names have a couple things in common - first, they do +not+ contain the actual CPU model. This may have been to avoid marketplace confusion and potential legal action from a outfit much bigger than Altair (Now who makes the 8080 again? Intel or Altair??). Secondly, the non-zero digits are in the same order in both model names - 680 (6800) and 8800 (8080). This most definitely does evoke the CPU model, and is easily recalled. The decision to go with 8800 (vs. 8008) may have been arbitrary, though "eighty-eighty" sounds a whole lot like "eighty-eight". The options for the 6800-based machine were not limited - other than 680, they had 6800 (sounds too much like 8800, though a case can be made for it..) and things like 6080 which would be just kind of weird (that's a well-known vacuum tube, btw). It's also worth noting that the 680 is physically smaller than the 8800, and the shorter three-digit model number seems to evoke a smaller product. On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 6:06 PM, Sam O'nella <barythrin at gmail.com> wrote: