The first personal computer	

And where was all this happening? It was far from Silicon Valley, Intel or IBM. Out in the desert near the airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Ed Roberts ran a calculator company called MITS.
Having an ugly building wasn't its only problem: MITS was going bankrupt. Nobody was buying calculators and Ed needed US$65,000 dollars just to stay afloat.

'We went to the bank. Had a late night meeting. And And the issue was whether they closed MITS down or whether they loaned us and additional 65,000.'

'And I was asked how many machines did I think we would sell in the next year after it was introduced. And I said 800. I was considered a wild-eyed optimist at that.
Within a month after it was introduced, we were getting 250 orders a day.'

The Altair wasn't even a computer. It was a computer kit.

'Woah. This is a pretty well-equipped machine.'

You had to build it yourself, and even then it usually didn't work.

Still, the demand was amazing.

'And there were actually people who came to Mitz - a couple of people with camper trailers and camped out in the parking lot, waiting for their machines. They were so eager..'

'I mean I think everybody had sort of day-dreamed, Walter Mittied about owning a computer. The surprise was that it would be possible for the average college student, for example, who was living on bare subsistence to actually buy a computer.'

'This is what really amazed me..was that people were so...there was a sort of pent up demand for having your own computer...'

'...if it could be that cheap, what a wonderful thing.'

[01.48]

This is an Altair computer - the first personal computer. And not just any Altair. This is Altair serial number 2 - the second one made. The first Altair was sent off to be photographed in a magazine and was lost in the mail. So this is the oldest personal computer in the world. Pretty historic junk, but the question is, what do you do with it?

I mean it has a front panel that you can click back and forth and some lights but at the back there's no place to connect a keyboard, there's no place to connect a monitor, there's no place to connect a printer. In fact, there's practically nothing at all you can really do with this thing. But back then, 1975, the people who had it were thrilled.

[4.05]
The Altair was tedious to use. At first, the only way that data and instructions could be given to the computer was by flipping switches. Take something trivial like two plus two. Each two needed 8 different switches to be flipped and then a ninth switch was used to load them all. To add required another nine switches. The answer 'four' was if the third light from the left turned on. Eureka!