The PC Revolution Begins

The first-generation microprocessor, the Intel 4004, had the equivalent of 2,250 transistors on a chip. By 1973, Intel had the 8080, which was 20 times faster than the 4004. That was what H. Edward Roberts had been waiting for.

Ed Roberts, president of MITS, an electronics company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, had been thinking about some computer kits for a while. The 8080 had the capabilities he was after. The first MITS do-it-yourself computer (called the Altair because Roberts' daughter pointed out that the starship Enterprise would visit a planet of that name on a current rerun of "Star Trek") was announced in January 1975. MITS shipped 5,000 units in 1975 and the home computer industry was off and running.

Describing that industry isn't easy, because it is exploding rather than growing. Noting that the Southern California Computer Society had begun with two members in September 1975 and had 20,000 members just one year later, Ted Nelson, a founder of the group, told a recent conference, "If the SCCS continues to grow at its present rate, in four years all mankind will be dues-paying members." That's just one computer club; it's estimated that new clubs are being started at the rate of one a week.

This kind of furious growth in a field is so new that major discoveries are commonplace has produced a ravenous appetite for information. Everyone with a home computer wants to know what everyone else is doing.

Ahl sees no limits for the hobby computer. "In five years," he says, "schools will have them, homes will have them, kids will have them. If a school doesn't have one, the kids will start bringing their own computers in."

"It's comparable to pocket calculators," says Ahl. Five years ago, if I had asked you whether you needed a pocket calculator, you wouldn't have been able to think of a need for it. Today, everyone has a calculator."

"This is the beginning of a movement that will have a greater impact than the calculator. A computer doesn't just do calculations. It does anything you want it to.

"Right now, the data-processing industry regards us as a fringe movement, something out of the mainstream of interest. They're wrong. In five years, the home computer will be the mainstream of this business."