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An Intel 8080-based machine made by MITS. TheAltair was the first popular microcomputer kit.It appeared on the cover of the January 1975 "PopularElectronics" magazine with an article (probably) by LeslieSolomon. Leslie Solomon was an editor at Popular Electronicswho had a knack for spotting kits that would interest peopleand make them buy the magazine. The Altair 8800 was one such.The MITS guys took the prototype Altair to New York to showSolomon, but couldn't get it to work after the flight.Nonetheless, he liked it, and it appeared on the cover as "Thefirst minicomputer in a kit."Solomon's blessing was important enough that some MITScompetitors named their product the "SOL" to gain his favour.Some wags suggested SOL was actually an abbreviation for thecondition in which kit purchasers would find themselves.Bill Gates and Paul Allen saw the article on the Altair 8800in Popular Electronics. They realised that the Altair, whichwas programmed via its binary front panel needed a high levellanguage. Legend has it that they called MITS with the claimthat they had a BASIC interpreter for the Altair. WhenMITS asked them to demo it in Albuquerque, they wrote one onthe plane. On arrival, they entered the machine code via thefront panel and demonstrated and sold their "product." Thuswas born "Altair BASIC."The original Altair BASIC ran in less than 4K of RAM because a"loaded" Altair had 4K memory. Since there was no operatingsystem on the Altair, Altair BASIC included what we now thinkof as BIOS. It was distributed on paper tape that couldbe read on a Teletype. Later versions supported the 8KAltair and the 16K diskette-based Altair (demonstratingthat, even in the 1970s, Microsoft was committed tosoftware bloat). Altair BASIC was ported to the Motorola6800 for the Altair 680 machine, and to other 8080-basedmicrocomputers produced by MITS' competitors.PC-History.org Altair 8800 page(http://pc-history.org/altair_8800.htm).[Forrest M. Mimms, article in "Computers and Electronics", (formerly "Popular Electronics"), Jan 1985 (?)].[Was there ever an "Altair 9000" microcomputer?]