In September 1974, Ed Roberts was $250,000 in the hole from a calculator business and begging the bank for a $65,000 loan. This money wasn’t going to calculators, but to something altogether different—an affordable personal computer. The price? $400. 

The idea of selling a computer at that price—around $2,400 in today’s dollars—was inconceivable. But in a few short years, Roberts’s idea proved a hit—he made millions from sales of his Altair 8800 computers. In the process, he launched the careers of luminaries like Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak, setting in motion the advent of mass-personal computing.

In this essay, first published by Every and now adapted by its author, historian and digital strategist Gareth Edwards walks us through the secret history of the first PC revolution. It’s vital context for our present moment, as AI promises to revolutionize technology just like the PC and the internet did before. In order to understand what’s ahead, one needs to reckon with how we got here in the first place.

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