Today my Friend, Forrest M. Mims III, shared
a post titled: "The Origin Of Microsoft 50 Years Ago." And
that triggered a lot of deja vu memories.
In 1975, like the 1959 song by the Coasters, "Along Came Jones" - I guess I would have to add: "Along Came Ed Roberts" - who with fellow Air Force technology officer, Forrest Mims, partnered with Bob Zaller and Stan Cagle to start a company in Albuquerque named MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), a company formed in 1969 to sell electronic telemetry modules for model rocket guidance and control. Later they added calculators, personal and desktop, to their product line.
In 1974, when Intel began producing its newer and faster 8-bit microprocessor, the 8080, Ed Roberts and MITS made the leap into computer history - by creating and producing the MITS Altair. And this is the computer which brought Paul Allen, an engineer with Honeywell, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to demonstrate a Basic software package he and Bill Gates, a long time friend and then a student at Harvard, had created.
Bill Gates left Harvard, he and Paul Allen moved to Albuquerque and became the programming staff for MITS, living in a motel across the highway from MITS. At that same time they were laying the foundation for the beginning of Microsoft.
How well I remember joining MITS in 1975. Just saying that suddenly makes me realize the 50 years really have gone by since that fateful day when I met with Ed Roberts and agreed to join his sales team. My, how time flies!
At that time, the MITS Altair was in the early stage of igniting an revolution which would put computers in homes all across America and around the world. Prior to that, computers were still tools used only in larger companies, educational and research organizations, government and government contractors, i.e., folks with deep pockets.
My task and reason for joining MITS was to contract and support Manufacturers Rep organizations in selling our company's product. One tool I used to help our Reps sell the Altair was to present Microcomputer Seminars in their local areas.
That was a time when companies large and small were looking for ways to use microprocessors in their products. And the MITS Altair with the Basic compiler created by Bill Gates and Paul Allen helped the engineers use the microprocessors. So my seminars were always filled with company engineers and project managers eager to learn about microprocessors.
Prior to joining MITS, I was doing the same for a Boston company named Control Logic. In 1974 I had signed a Manufacturer's Representative contract with Paul Terrell and Floyd Wilson to sell my Control Logic modules and systems in the Palo Alto, California area. In 1975, when I left Control Logic and joined MITS, I asked Paul and Floyd to jump to MITS with me. But since they were just getting up to speed selling Control Logic products, they chose not to jump.
A month or so later, I presented two nights of Microcomputer Seminars at Dinah's Hyatt House Hotel in Palo Alto - and the first night the room was overflowing and I had to ask people standing ten deep outside the room to come back the next evening. After the seminar that first night, Paul Terrell told me, "Bill, I am ready to make the switch to MITS." I was impressed with the overflowing response of engineers and managers in the Palo Alto area who came to the seminars - and so was Paul.
Paul and Floyd made the switch in a really big way. Shortly after joining the MITS team, they opened the Byte Shop computer store in Mountain View, California - the second computer store in America, most likely the world. The first being a man and wife who had a storefront shop in Los Angeles and sold computer products on consignment.
Paul then opened another in Palo Alto with his brother, and a third in Oregon with another brother, and the Terrell brothers were giving folks a local store where they could eventually buy a personal computer for use in their homes. That was the beginning of the Byte Shop Computer Store Chain, the very first computer store chain in the world.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Forrest M. Mims III posted August 9, 2025 · "THE ORIGIN OF MICROSOFT 50 YEARS AGO"
The 50th anniversary of Microsoft is fast approaching. Several years ago and more recently, MS staff told me a major 50th anniversary celebration was being planned. I am unaware of the status of those plans. Nevertheless, I would like to point out that Microsoft did not originate on its own.
When I was 12 years old, I wanted to assist my blind great-grandfather in his outdoor walks. During my senior year at Texas A&M, I devised a small, handheld device that projected a powerful, invisible beam of infrared (IR) and detected any of that IR reflected back to the device. My great grandfather had passed away, but I spent several years experimenting with IR travel aids for the blind.
The IR beam for these devices was pulsed by a simple 2-transistor circuit designed by Lou Garner, who wrote the popular "Transistor Topics" column for "Popular Electronics" magazine before I took it over. While flying model rockets at night to test a new kind of guidance, I used that circuit to flash a small light to enable me to recover the rockets.
How to build the light flasher became my first magazine article for "Model Rocketry" in September 1969. When I showed the article to my friend Ed Roberts at the Air Force Weapons Lab, where we were both assigned, we decided to form a company to sell light flasher kits. Our partners were Bob Zaller and Stan Cagle. We named our company Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems--or MITS. Some of our earliest products are shown in the nearby photo over instructions typed by my wife Minnie.
In 1974, Ed designed the Altair 8800 microcomputer, which was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics, for which I wrote monthly columns. I wrote the first Altair instruction manual. Paul Allen saw this cover story at a Harvard Square bookstore and raced over to his best friend's dorm room to show him. His friend was Bill Gates. By summer 1975, Ed had hired Paul Allen. Bill Gates arrived that fall. Within a few months, they partnered to form Micro-Soft. Ed stayed with MITS for a few years, and I became a full-time writer and science consultant.
Full details about the launch of Microsoft from MITS are in my two memoirs ("Siliconnections" and "Maverick Scientist") and various magazine articles.
The photo shows rocket telemetry devices and a light flasher (left) and the transmitter and receiver boards and lenses for the Opticom, a light beam communicator I described in "Popular Electronics."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Wow, after all this fun - and FIFTY YEARS have slipped by so fast. Forrest, thanks for reminding me, and thanks for the memories which would not have happened if you, Ed Roberts, Bob Zaller, and Stan Cagle had not formed MITS in 1969-70.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
In 1975, like the 1959 song by the Coasters, "Along Came Jones" - I guess I would have to add: "Along Came Ed Roberts" - who with fellow Air Force technology officer, Forrest Mims, partnered with Bob Zaller and Stan Cagle to start a company in Albuquerque named MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), a company formed in 1969 to sell electronic telemetry modules for model rocket guidance and control. Later they added calculators, personal and desktop, to their product line.
In 1974, when Intel began producing its newer and faster 8-bit microprocessor, the 8080, Ed Roberts and MITS made the leap into computer history - by creating and producing the MITS Altair. And this is the computer which brought Paul Allen, an engineer with Honeywell, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to demonstrate a Basic software package he and Bill Gates, a long time friend and then a student at Harvard, had created.
Bill Gates left Harvard, he and Paul Allen moved to Albuquerque and became the programming staff for MITS, living in a motel across the highway from MITS. At that same time they were laying the foundation for the beginning of Microsoft.
How well I remember joining MITS in 1975. Just saying that suddenly makes me realize the 50 years really have gone by since that fateful day when I met with Ed Roberts and agreed to join his sales team. My, how time flies!
At that time, the MITS Altair was in the early stage of igniting an revolution which would put computers in homes all across America and around the world. Prior to that, computers were still tools used only in larger companies, educational and research organizations, government and government contractors, i.e., folks with deep pockets.
My task and reason for joining MITS was to contract and support Manufacturers Rep organizations in selling our company's product. One tool I used to help our Reps sell the Altair was to present Microcomputer Seminars in their local areas.
That was a time when companies large and small were looking for ways to use microprocessors in their products. And the MITS Altair with the Basic compiler created by Bill Gates and Paul Allen helped the engineers use the microprocessors. So my seminars were always filled with company engineers and project managers eager to learn about microprocessors.
Prior to joining MITS, I was doing the same for a Boston company named Control Logic. In 1974 I had signed a Manufacturer's Representative contract with Paul Terrell and Floyd Wilson to sell my Control Logic modules and systems in the Palo Alto, California area. In 1975, when I left Control Logic and joined MITS, I asked Paul and Floyd to jump to MITS with me. But since they were just getting up to speed selling Control Logic products, they chose not to jump.
A month or so later, I presented two nights of Microcomputer Seminars at Dinah's Hyatt House Hotel in Palo Alto - and the first night the room was overflowing and I had to ask people standing ten deep outside the room to come back the next evening. After the seminar that first night, Paul Terrell told me, "Bill, I am ready to make the switch to MITS." I was impressed with the overflowing response of engineers and managers in the Palo Alto area who came to the seminars - and so was Paul.
Paul and Floyd made the switch in a really big way. Shortly after joining the MITS team, they opened the Byte Shop computer store in Mountain View, California - the second computer store in America, most likely the world. The first being a man and wife who had a storefront shop in Los Angeles and sold computer products on consignment.
Paul then opened another in Palo Alto with his brother, and a third in Oregon with another brother, and the Terrell brothers were giving folks a local store where they could eventually buy a personal computer for use in their homes. That was the beginning of the Byte Shop Computer Store Chain, the very first computer store chain in the world.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Forrest M. Mims III posted August 9, 2025 · "THE ORIGIN OF MICROSOFT 50 YEARS AGO"
The 50th anniversary of Microsoft is fast approaching. Several years ago and more recently, MS staff told me a major 50th anniversary celebration was being planned. I am unaware of the status of those plans. Nevertheless, I would like to point out that Microsoft did not originate on its own.
When I was 12 years old, I wanted to assist my blind great-grandfather in his outdoor walks. During my senior year at Texas A&M, I devised a small, handheld device that projected a powerful, invisible beam of infrared (IR) and detected any of that IR reflected back to the device. My great grandfather had passed away, but I spent several years experimenting with IR travel aids for the blind.
The IR beam for these devices was pulsed by a simple 2-transistor circuit designed by Lou Garner, who wrote the popular "Transistor Topics" column for "Popular Electronics" magazine before I took it over. While flying model rockets at night to test a new kind of guidance, I used that circuit to flash a small light to enable me to recover the rockets.
How to build the light flasher became my first magazine article for "Model Rocketry" in September 1969. When I showed the article to my friend Ed Roberts at the Air Force Weapons Lab, where we were both assigned, we decided to form a company to sell light flasher kits. Our partners were Bob Zaller and Stan Cagle. We named our company Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems--or MITS. Some of our earliest products are shown in the nearby photo over instructions typed by my wife Minnie.
In 1974, Ed designed the Altair 8800 microcomputer, which was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics, for which I wrote monthly columns. I wrote the first Altair instruction manual. Paul Allen saw this cover story at a Harvard Square bookstore and raced over to his best friend's dorm room to show him. His friend was Bill Gates. By summer 1975, Ed had hired Paul Allen. Bill Gates arrived that fall. Within a few months, they partnered to form Micro-Soft. Ed stayed with MITS for a few years, and I became a full-time writer and science consultant.
Full details about the launch of Microsoft from MITS are in my two memoirs ("Siliconnections" and "Maverick Scientist") and various magazine articles.
The photo shows rocket telemetry devices and a light flasher (left) and the transmitter and receiver boards and lenses for the Opticom, a light beam communicator I described in "Popular Electronics."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Wow, after all this fun - and FIFTY YEARS have slipped by so fast. Forrest, thanks for reminding me, and thanks for the memories which would not have happened if you, Ed Roberts, Bob Zaller, and Stan Cagle had not formed MITS in 1969-70.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
Click on the images to enlarge
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