13 Aug
1998
13 Aug
'98
9:27 p.m.
On Fri, 14 Aug 1998, Bob Wood wrote:
I did not mean to suggest that the Altair was the 1st
PC or even the
1st micro. However, the Altair is perceived at this time to be "the
start of it all" and it is the one that is available in enough numbers
to become a collectible. The Mark 8 and Scelbi, for example, suffer from
extreme rarity. They are now virtually non existent. So will never
attract the widespread interest of the Altair. numbers
An an amateur quasi-historian, I think the misperception about the
Altair's significance is a shame. There are computers that were produced
in similar numbers that are much more interesting, and even more fun to
play with.
The Altair and the Apple 1 both started at about the same time, but the
Apple went on to have a much greater impact on "personal" interactive
computing in the form of the Apple ][. IBM's PC was a response to the
Apple ][, and that set the stage for the way things have been ever since.
The only real influence of the Altair was that Wozniak held it in
contempt and modeled his machine more on the desktop models he saw at HP,
like the HP 9830A with built-in BASIC from 1972.
So, in my quasi-historian opinion, the Altair can safely be ignored by
collectors, or treated as an interesting freak, since the only influence
it had that survives today is the choice of an Intel CPU.
However, the influence of an interactive desktop machine like the HP 9830
can still be felt very strongly. The 9830 would get my vote as the most
collectible early machine that is fairly accessible.
BTW, a parallel that I find very interesting is that in 1975, IBM came out
with their first "personal" computer, the IBM 5100. This machine was a
direct response to the HP 9830, just as their IBM 5150 was a direct
response to the Apple ][. If the Altair had never existed, things would
probably be just the same as they are today. The Altair is practically
out of the historical loop :-)
-- Doug