Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems
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Image:Mitslogo.gifMicro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) was an Albuquerque, New Mexico company founded in 1968 by Ed Roberts. Initially MITS was in the calculator business until 1972 when Texas Instruments began to dominate the low cost calculator market. MITS also made instrumentation kits for model rockets and RC vehicles. MITS is best known for creating the Altair 8800, and is commonly credited for starting the home computer industry.
Altair
In the early 1970s, MITS was close to going bankrupt, due to disappointing calculator sales. MITS developed the Altair 8800, one of the first hobbyist microcomputer kits in 1973 and 1974 using the Intel 8080 microprocessor. The Altair 8800 was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine. For a very brief time, MITS employed Bill Gates while he and Paul Allen wrote a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 before they left to found Microsoft in 1975.
MITS was overwhelmed by orders for the Altair 8800 and quickly ran into to quality problems with its memory boards. Shortly after the release of the Altair 8800 many other companies such as IMSAI began to release similar products, making Roberts furious. Roberts demanded that new computer stores only sell the Altair 8800. The company was sold for $6.5m USD to Pertec in May 1977 becoming one of the first casualties in the industry it spawned.
