Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS)

MITS was an Albuquerque, New Mexico company founded in 1968? by Dr. Ed Roberts. Initially MITS was in the calculator business until about 1972 when Texas Instruments (TI) started to dominate the low cost calculator market.

MITS created the Altair 8800, one of the first hobbyist microcomputer kits in 1973 and 1974 using the Intel 8080 microprocessor. The Altair 8800 was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine. The MITS Altair 8800 is commonly credited with starting the home computer industry.

For a brief time, MITS employed Bill Gates until Gates left MITS to found Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975.

MITS was overwhelmed by orders for the Altair 8800 and quickly ran into to quality problems with its memory boards. The company was sold to Pertec in May 1977 becoming one of the first casualties in the industry it spawned.