The ​ Altair 8800 was the first of its kind: a personal computer announced in 1974, available in both kit and ready-built form. It was based on the new Intel 8080 microprocessor, which meant it could be sold for the breakthrough price of $470. A real computer for less than $500? This was unheard of!

Your money got you a large blue box, with a front panel featuring 36 LEDs and 17 switches. That was it - no monitor, no keyboard, and no way to save or load code. Oh, and you got 256 bytes of memory.

To write software for the Altair, you had to flip the switches on the front to enter the binary equivalent of machine code instructions, and see the LEDs change if you got it right. 

This might seem limiting (to say the least), but before long the flexibility of the design meant there were terminals available, paper tape readers, audio tape recorders, disk drives, video cards - and eventually proper operating systems (like CP/M) and real, useful application software. The PC age had arrived!

Want to see an original? Various computer museums have Altairs in their collection. If you live in Seattle, the Living Computer Museum has one on display connected to a terminal. Live demonstrations happen daily! The Microsoft campus in Redmond WA has their own Visitor Center, and there's an Altair in a glass case along with some paper tape containing Microsoft BASIC.

The ​ Computer History Museum in California has several in their micro-computer collection. The Science Museum in London has a great computing exhibition , and they too have an Altair. The Smithsonian in Washington DC has an Altair in the National Museum of American History .

But you know what? Looking at these computers in a museum isn't going to teach you much. You're so much better off building a kit or using the simulator, and writing some code or playing ​​ Zork . Try it!

Are you a fan of The IT Crowd? Keep a lookout for what is sitting on the shelf over Moss' left shoulder..