Henry Edward (Ed) Roberts, 1941-2010

Ed Roberts is perhaps best known as the developer of the MITS Altair 8800 in 1975, a device which is widely credited for having sparked the revolution in personal computing. The Altair 8800 was a build-it-yourself hobbyist kit consisting of switches, with no display, and MITS had little faith that they'd sell even 200 units, enough to break even on the project. But thanks to a cover story in an issue of Popular Electronics, MITS was flooded with offers, receiving several thousand in the...