Designer of the first commercially successful personal computer, Roberts transformed computing in 1975. He founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in 1970 to sell electronics kits to model rocketry hobbyists, but the first successful product was an electronic calculator kit that was featured on the cover of the November 1971 Popular Electronics. The calculators were very successful, and sales topped one million dollars in 1973. A brutal calculator price war left the company deeply in debt by 1974.
Roberts then developed the Altair 8800 personal computer, which used the new Intel 8080 microprocessor. It was featured on the cover of the January 1975 Popular Electronics, and hobbyists flooded MITS with orders for this $397 computer kit. Bill Gates and Paul Allen joined MITS to develop software, and Altair BASIC was Microsoft's first product.
Roberts sold MITS in 1977 and retired to Georgia, where he studied medicine and became a small-town doctor.
