1976 News on Technology

The First Altair Computer Conference opens at Albuquerque, N.M., to promote the Altair 8800 introduced last year. Priced at $379 in its basic version, it requires extra memory boards and other add-ons if it is to be used for anything useful or entertaining, the add-ons may double its price, and its open architecture allows others to make innovations of their own (it also invites competition) (see 1977).

Microsoft Corp. is founded at Albuquerque by computer whiz Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen with the stated aim of creating a software business separate from any hardware company (see 1975; 1977).

Apple Computer Co. is founded April 1 in a California garage to produce personal computers. Stephen G. Wozniak, 25, and Steven P. Jobs, 21, are college dropouts who have spent 6 months designing the crude prototype for Apple I, using ideas, including the mouse, picked up from visits to Xerox Corp. technologists at their Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox Parc). Jobs was permitted to audit Stanford physics classes while still in high school, he has been experimenting with computer circuits for years, his father has told him to produce something that could be sold and do it within 30 days or get a job, and he has persuaded Wozniak that they could make the simple computer (essentially some microchips screwed to a piece of plywood) for $20 and sell it for $40. Jobs has raised $1,500 with help from Apple cofounder Armas Clifford "Mike" Markkula Jr., 33, he and Wozniak have agreed to pay the Stanford Research Institute $45,000 for a lifetime license to the mouse technology, and Wozniak uses the 4,000-transistor MOS Technology 6502 microchip as the basis for Apple II, which is marketed in a wooden cabinet (see 1977).

The first floppy-disk drive for small computers is shipped in September by Shugart Associates (see 1971; Seagate Technology, 1979).