Personal Computers
T
he earliest personal computer was the Altair 8800. Ed
Roberts created the first one in his garage in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, in 1975. It arrived as a kit that buyers had to
assemble. It had no keyboard, monitor, printer, or mouse,
and only 250 bytes of memory. That is about the amount of
memory a modern computer uses to store one sentence.
The Altair 8800 had switches on a front panel and lights
on the back. The user flipped the switches to program the
computer. For example, to add two plus two, the user had to
flip eight switches for each two, and nine switches for plus.
The third light on the left indicated the answer four.
Although Altair 8800 could not do much, hobbyists liked
the challenge of entering commands and seeing if their pro-
gram actually worked. Two teenagers named Bill Gates and
Paul Allen developed a programming language called BASIC,
which allowed users to load the program on paper tape right
into the computer rather than flipping switches. This made
computers easier to operate and made it possible for them
to do more.
remember him saying this like it was yesterday: “Well, even
if we lose our money, we’ll have a company. For once in our
lives, we’ll have a company.” . . . That convinced me. And
I was excited to think about us like that. To be two best
friends starting a company. Wow. I knew right then that I’d
do it. How could I not? 34
Once the two agreed on selling the circuit boards, they had to
come up with a name for the company. Jobs, who had recently
visited the All One Farm, suggested Apple Computers. He wanted
a name that did not sound too technical and would attract every-
day people. Wozniak liked the name. On April 1, 1976, Apple
Computers was born.
42 Steve Jobs