Born in Miami, Roberts was the son of Melvin, who ran a repair service company, and his mother Edna Wilcher, was a nurse.
In 1969 Robert together with his three colleagues, working at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in Roberts' garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and started selling radio-controlled airplanes and model rockets. The company began manufacturing electronic calculators in 1971
Roberts decided to design an Intel 8080 based computer, and released the $395 Altair 8800 based on Intel's revolutionary 8080 processor in December 19, 1974. The product later was published on the front cover of 1975 Popular Mechanics making it an overnight success.
In February 1975, MITS received 1000 orders for the Altair. MITS have delivered 2500 Altair 8800s by the end of May.
Roberts’ vision was a computer that was affordable to more people than other computers released at the time.
Roberts’ wanted to reach out to hobbyists who were interested in working on a computer for fun. Roberts wanted his computer to retail at affordable price.
Henry Edward “Ed” Roberts: Inventor the first successful personal computer
