It Wasn’t Apple.

What was the world’s first commercially successful personal computer?

It wasn’t Apple.

Not Commodore.

Definitely not Radio Shack.

It was the MITS Altair 8800, launched in 1975 and powered by the Intel 8080 CPU.

No keyboard.

No screen.

Just toggle switches, blinking LEDs, and 256 bytes of RAM (yes, bytes!)

Cost? $439 (about $2,600 today), and you had to assemble it yourself - unless you paid extra and waited longer.

It became so popular that hobbyists drove hundreds of miles to Albuquerque, New Mexico, just to pick one up in person.

But why does the Altair matter?

Because it lit the fuse for two tech giants:

Microsoft: Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote Altair BASIC, their first software product, kickstarting Microsoft in 1975. (See comments for the original 1975 source code!)

Apple: It inspired Steve Wozniak, who built the Apple I using a cheaper MOS 6502 CPU.

Sometimes, life changing innovations start with a few blinking lights.

Originally shared on LinkedIn