Doug Yowza <yowza(a)yowza.com> wrote:
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.
Here's what is significant about MITS and the Altair 8800:
It arrived on the scene with a price that firmly fixed in lots of
folks' heads the idea that "I can own a computer." And it was
obviously a useful computer that could be expanded to do real work
just like the real computer in the fishbowl at the office, not
something that could only be appreciated through the lights and
switches on its front panel.
And MITS' hardware was flaky enough that other folks felt encouraged
to build stuff for its bus, and even build other systems using its
bus. That made the Altair bus a de facto standard of its day,
and one that stuck around for the next few days too.
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.
I'd venture to say that Altair buyers saw the Altair as having the
potential to be this sort of "interactive" machine too. The base
configuration wasn't, but it was clear that you could buy more memory,
a current-loop interface, a Teletype, and run BASIC. And that was the
goal a lot of folks had then. That put you in the big leagues with
the minis that you might be using at work or in school, and put the
user in control of the computer.
That said, I think that if MITS hadn't done it with the Altair,
someone else would have done it soon enough.
-Frank McConnell