In short
The Altair 8800, released by MITS in April 1974, was the first commercially successful personal computer. It cost $395 as a kit and sparked the home computer revolution by proving ordinary people could own and program their own machines.
How it unfolded.
The five-minute version
What actually happened.
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Year by year.
Across 5 years, 5 pivotal moments.
Timeline
How it actually unfolded.
Intel 8008 processor introduced
The first 8-bit microprocessor becomes available, setting the stage for affordable personal computers.
Altair 8800 released
MITS releases the Altair 8800, a kit-based computer featuring the Intel 8080. Priced at $395 for the kit, it becomes the first commercially successful personal computer.
Popular Electronics cover story
The Altair 8800 appears on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine, triggering nationwide interest and orders that overwhelm MITS.
Microsoft founded
Bill Gates and Paul Allen establish Microsoft to develop BASIC, a programming language for the Altair, marking the beginning of the software industry.
Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80 launch
Three fully assembled personal computers hit the market, bringing consumer-friendly alternatives to kit-based systems like the Altair.
The numbers.
3 numbers that anchor the scale.
By the numbers
The countable parts.
Price (kit)
$0
Price (assembled)
$0
RAM
0 bytes to 64 kilobytes
The chain begins -
The chain of consequence.
Impact
What followed.
The Altair 8800 didn't just launch a product category—it created the conditions for the microcomputer industry. By making computing affordable and accessible to hobbyists, it attracted the talent (including a teenage Bill Gates) that would build the software ecosystem underlying modern personal computing.
Captured in time.
Captured before it changed
The web as it looked, the day it happened.
Wayback Machine snapshots of the pages people actually loaded that day. Click any card to open the archive at full size.
Sources & citations.
Sources
Where this came from.
Every claim on this page traces to a public, license-clean source. We don't asterisk well.
Wikipedia
1 source- 1.