Friday, April 02, 2010

MITS Altair 8800 inventor dies

I read this article in today's Seattle Times about Dr. Henry Roberts passing away. While I never owned an Altair I started my "programming" career having to hand-load the binary software program for a punch card reader into a DEC PDP 11. That was probably "advanced" compared to the Altair.

The Altair inspired Bill Gates and Paul Allen. In many ways, the Altair - and Dr. Roberts - were the catalyst for Microsoft and the dynamic duo of Gates and Allen. Up until the end Dr. Roberts was interested in technology:
...he never lost his interest in modern technology, even asking about Apple's highly anticipated iPad from his sick bed.
Dr. Roberts helped to change our world.

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