The Altair 8800 — the first commercially successful personal computer kit (1975), whose launch triggered the PC revolution by proving there was consumer demand for personal computing.
The PC's origin moment: the Altair 8800 (advertised on the January 1975 cover of Popular Electronics) was a kit computer requiring assembly, with no keyboard, no display, and no software when shipped. Yet it sold 10,000 units in the first few months — proving that there was latent demand for personal computing that the industry had not recognized. Bill Gates and Paul Allen saw the cover, wrote BASIC for it (their first product), and founded Microsoft. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak saw it as the opening for Apple. The Altair is the detonator of the personal computer era.
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