1970 to 1979: Computers and Software Begin Creating Wealth - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 137

example, lived in Cupertino, California, which is fairly near the center of Silicon
Valley. Dozens of software and high-technology companies are still located in the
region, as are many of the venture capital companies that funded the startups.
Other fruitful areas for software startups are on the East Coast centering on
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in the state of Texas. But successful software com-
panies have occurred in many geographic regions, including Cincinnati, Ohio;
Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and Jacksonville, Florida.
This decade witnessed a number of lawsuits either between software and com-
puter companies themselves or filed by governments. Several antitrust suits, patent
infringement suits, copyright infringement suits, and other kinds of modern litig-
ation against computing and software companies seemed to accelerate during this
decade, and they have scarcely slowed down in later decades. Business tends to be
litigious, and the software business is no exception.
The following sections are a sampling of the computer and software companies
that formed in the 1970s.
Altair Computers
The Altair 8800 computer was one of the first personal computers . It is famous
because Altair Basic was the initial product developed by Microsoft. The company
that built Altair was the Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems Corpora-
tion (MITS), founded in 1969 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, by Forrest Mims, Ed
Roberts, Stan Cagle, and Bob Zaller.
MITS did not start with computers but rather with model-rocket equipment
(which explains the somewhat complex name of the company). Computers came
later in the 1970s. The Altair 8800 came out in 1975 and was featured in Popular
Science magazine, which made it quite a best seller, with thousands of units selling
in the first month. Paul Allen and Bill Gates moved to Albuquerque, founded Mi-
crosoft, and developed applications for the Altair 8800, including Altair Basic.
The Altair 8800 was technically sophisticated for the era, using an Intel 8080
chip and creating what later became the S-100 bus, a de facto industry standard.
This computer was the enabling device that started many other important compan-
ies and inventions.
Apple Computer was founded in part due to Steve Jobs's and Steve Wozniak's
desire to improve on the Altair 8800 by offering a full computer. IMSAI computers
were also introduced soon after with the idea of improving on the Altair. IMSAI