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Henry Edward Roberts was born on September 13, 1941 to parents Henry Melvin Roberts, and Edna Wilcher Roberts. -
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Ed Roberts put his college dreams on hold in order to support his family by enlisting in the US. Air Force. -
Ed Roberts earned his electrical engineering degree from Oklahoma State University. He was also involved in Eta Kappa Nu, a national honor society for electrical electronics engineers. -
After completing his degree as a part of the Air Force's Airman Education Commissioning Program he returned to the Air Force as a second lieutenant. He was assigned to the Laser Division of the Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico.. -
Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) was formed by Ed Roberts and his friend Forrest Mims III to sell electronic kits for model rockets. -
the MITS Model 816 was featured by the Popular Electronics Magazine. The kit sold for $179 and the assembled version cost $275. -
Finding it difficult to compete with larger office equipment and semiconductor companies, Ed takes the company public with a stock offering of 500,000 shares at $1 per share. He ended up selling only half the shares. -
The cover of the January 2025 issue of popular electronics magazine featured the Altair 8800. It was marketed as the worlds first minicomputer. -
Bill Gates and Paul Allen produced a basic interpreter for the Altair 8800 in 3 different memory sizes- 4k, 8k, and Extended. -
MITS releases updates to the 8800, an Altair 680, and a plethora of peripheral devices because of the demand generated from the hobbyist and hacker communities. -
Ed grew tired of managing MITS and reached out to Pertec to take over because of their close relationship as a major MITS supplier. -
Ed didn't like where Pertec was taking the company and decided to leave and move to a farm in Wheeler County, GA -
After farming for a few years, Ed applied to Mercer University and graduated with their first Class -
Died at 68 due to pneumonia
