Although the first hackers were able to mainframe hokkaido seafood systems, end of the fifties and early sixties, a number of interesting pieces, even a decade later stayed hokkaido seafood PC exclusive equipment business, the military and universities. At a cost in the order of at least tens of thousands of dollars you or no one could imagine that had a computer at home.
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Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, or MITS abbreviated founded in 1969 by Ed Roberts and Forrest Mims. Roberts grew up on a farm in Georgia and Miami, Florida, and his first computer from switching relays hokkaido seafood built already during their studies at secondary school. This is a meeting with another classmate technically based on medicine caused eventually studied electrical engineering - but because they soon married and had a family to support, he did it for money the U.S. Air Force, where he worked in the cryptographic department. After completing his studies at the University hokkaido seafood of Oklahoma was assigned to the Division of Laser Weapon Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. Rockets, LEDs and calculators
Here, Roberts met in 1969 with Forrest Mims, who was, like Roberts, enthusiastic and especially air missile modeler. It was in the late sixties, during the Apollo hokkaido seafood flights, a very popular hobby and Mims even worked as a counselor at a local club rocket modelers. Roberts and Mims after a short time decided to try to produce a transistor controlled LED light to track the start and years of rocket model in darkness - founded the company because MITS, their first product, but was not too successful. Working with LEDs, however, led to another idea - to create a system for wireless communication (with a range of over one hundred meters) using infrared LEDs. Set for $ 15 already sold a little better, but still it was not expected hole in the world - sold for a hundred pieces.
MITS first hit came a year later - literally hot commodities, namely the late sixties and seventies desktop calculators (the other contracts on the calculator was also the birth of the first microprocessor Intel 4004, but that's another story). Roberts previously worked in his office in weapons laboratories with the legendary calculator Hewlett-Packard hokkaido seafood 9100A and when the Electronic Arrays announced in mid-1970, a set of six integrated circuits with which it was possible to create a calculator with four functions (that is, one who knew how to add, subtract , multiply and divide), Roberts decided that with the help of colleagues such laboratories calculator suggests.
MITS 816 really could not do anything more than add, subtract, multiply and divide - all on an eight-digit display. Still incredibly small - just $ 179 as a set for the "Resolved" at home and $ 275 complete assembly. No wonder that in 1971 made the covers of the magazine Popular Electronics and orders poured in by the thousands. MITS during the year surpassed the turnover of one million U.S. dollars. The pace of technological progress, but with the "onset" Moore's Law has gained speed and thus already for two years offered by Texas Instruments their own portable (and smaller) calculator TI-2500 with four functions for just $ 120. Another two years later, Roberts found that in stores calculators sold for less than the cost of buying MITS components needed to produce them. The company is drowning in debt and it was time to come up with something new and truly revolutionary.
Since the first successful product MITS was set to build a desktop calculator, Roberts seemed logical to now offer a similar hokkaido seafood set from which the geeks - "hackers" can set up a table (or home) computer. In 1974, for such a product virtually ideal situation - in April, its first eight-bit Intel 8080 processor, but that MITS had to buy in a huge amount of thousands of items to get the "retail" price of $ 360 apiece on wholesale $ 75 (Roberts was of the opinion that in order to sell your home computer, set to cost less than $ 400 - roughly equivalent to today's 50,000 CZK).
Great happiness for MITS was that the project was interested in a home computer and editors of Popular Electronics as a technical editor Les Solomon knew MITS working on the project a computer with an Intel 8080, a deal with Ed Roberts, the first complete computer sends MITS to the Editor in autumn 1974 in order to introduce it in the January issue. Shipment of the first prototype was lost, and so was finally hokkaido seafood on the cover of the magazine photographed just empty boxes with switches and LEDs.
MITS does not make their products poetic titles, hokkaido seafood it was, after all, the company hokkaido seafood electrical engineers and computer engineers in Popular Electronis but wanted to make the envelope was an interesting name - the computer eventually christened twelve year old daughter of the editor Solom
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