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Solomon already had a number of pictures of the machine and the article was based on them. However, it never arrived due to a strike by the shipping company.
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Įd Roberts and his head engineer, Bill Yates, finished the first prototype in October 1974 and shipped it to Popular Electronics in New York via the Railway Express Agency. The editors of Popular Electronics wanted a complete kit in a professional-looking enclosure. The hobbyist faced the daunting task of acquiring all of the integrated circuits and other components.
Altair 8800 computer kit tv#
The TV Typewriter and the Mark-8 computer projects were just a detailed set of plans and a set of bare printed circuit boards. One of the editors, Les Solomon, knew MITS was working on an Intel 8080 based computer project and thought Roberts could provide the project for the always popular January issue. ( Popular Electronics gave Jerry Ogden a column, Computer Bits, starting in June 1975.) The computer trainer was put on hold and the editors looked for a real computer system. They were evaluating a computer trainer project by Jerry Ogden when the Mark-8 8008-based computer by Jonathan Titus appeared on the July 1974 cover of Radio-Electronics. Don Lancaster did an ASCII keyboard for Popular Electronics in April 1974. He was impressed with Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter ( Radio Electronics, September 1973) article and wanted computer projects for Popular Electronics.
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It was Salsberg's goal to reclaim the lead in electronics projects. In 1974, Art Salsberg became editor of Popular Electronics. In 19, some of the best construction projects appeared in Radio-Electronics. The change in editorial staff upset many of their authors, and they started writing for a competing magazine, Radio-Electronics. In January 1972, Popular Electronics merged with another Ziff-Davis magazine, Electronics World. January 1975 Popular Electronics with the Altair 8800 computer. MITS and many other companies were devastated by this, and Roberts struggled to reduce his quarter-million-dollar debt. In 1972, Texas Instruments developed its own calculator chip and started selling complete calculators at less than half the price of other commercial models. They installed a wave soldering machine and an assembly line at the new location. To keep up with the demand, MITS moved into a larger building at 6328 Linn NE in Albuquerque in 1973. These included an IC tester, a waveform generator, a digital voltmeter, and several other instruments. In addition to calculators, MITS made a line of test equipment kits. MITS later developed a programmer unit that would connect to the 816 or 1440 calculator and allow programs of up to 256 steps. The kit sold for $200 and the assembled version was $250. It had a 14-digit display, memory, and square root function. The MITS 1440 calculator was featured in the July 1973 issues of Radio-Electronics. The calculator was successful and was followed by several improved models.
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As payment for each manual he often accepted a copy of the kit. Forrest Mims wrote the assembly manual for this kit and many others over the next several years. This calculator kit sold for $175 ($275 assembled). The MITS 816 calculator kit used the chipset and was featured on the November 1971 cover of Popular Electronics. Electronic Arrays had just announced a set of six large scale integrated (LSI) circuit chips that would make a four-function calculator. As Mims and Cagle were losing interest in the kit business, Roberts bought his partners out, then began developing a calculator kit. The November 1970 issue of Popular Electronics featured the Opticom, a kit from MITS that would send voice over an LED light beam. The model rocket kits were a modest success and MITS wanted to try a kit that would appeal to more hobbyists. In 1969, Roberts and Mims, along with Stan Cagle and Robert Zaller, founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in Roberts' garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and started selling radio transmitters and instruments for model rockets. Mims III decided to use their electronics background to produce small kits for model rocket hobbyists. While serving at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, Ed Roberts and Forrest M. This "Tracking Light for Model Rockets" project appeared in the September 1969 issue of Model Rocketry and was the first kit sold by MITS.