“MITS [was] in kind of a funky warehouse-like building in Albuquerque . . . kind of a lower-end operation, but . . . we were so excited we were over the moon. ”
— Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft

In the early ‘70s, a winning combination of parts, players, and know-how came together right here in Albuquerque. It happened at an obscure electronics company known as MITS—for Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems. The payoff was the world’s first successful personal computer—the Altair. MITS president Ed Roberts led the design team, which built the Altair around Intel’s powerful new 8080 chip. Bill Gates and Paul Allen created a version of BASIC software that worked on the Altair. The result of their collaboration was a computer that people could actually assemble and put to use. Thousands of Altairs were sold, and the computer revolution began, changing the way we live, work, and play.