But Popular Electronics readers were introduced to something in the January 1975 issue that they had never encountered before. Below a heading that read “PROJECT BREAKTHROUGH”, the magazine’s cover showed a large gray and black box whose front panel bore a complicated array of lights and toggles. This was the Altair 8800, the “world’s first minicomputer kit to rival commercial models”, available for under $400. Though advertised as a “minicomputer”, the Altair would actually be the first commercially successful member of a new class of computers, first known as “microcomputers” and then eventually as PCs. The Altair was small enough and cheap enough that the average family could have one at home. Its appearance in Popular Electronics magazine meant that, as Salsberg wrote in that issue, “the home computer age is here – finally”.
You can play with the Altair 8800 in your browser.
They should start education at computer science classes with these rather than Java.
I went to the link to run it in my browser – Oh my, that is one scary screen. I can’t imagine using that as my home computer.
I’d imagine most users probably had a serial dumb terminal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micral seems to be the first commercially successful microcomputer, 2 years earlier / from 1973. Though it was quite a bit more expensive and targeted at ~professional applications …but I wonder if some units eventually found their way to French hobbyists.