| Inventor, businessman, doctor of medicine Date of Birth: 13.09.1941 Country: USA |
Ed Roberts was an American electrical engineer, entrepreneur, and medical doctor who developed the first commercially successful personal computer in 1975. He was known as the 'father of the personal computer'.
Henry Edward Roberts was born on September 13, 1941, in Miami, Florida, to Henry Melvin Roberts and Edna Wilcher Roberts. He had a younger sister named Cheryl. During World War II, while his father was serving in the military, Ed and his mother lived on the Wilcher family farm in Wheeler County, Georgia. After the war, the family returned to Miami, but Ed continued to spend summers on his grandparents' farm.
Roberts Sr. had his own small business repairing electrical appliances in Miami, and Ed became interested in electronics and built a small computer based on relays while still in school. However, he enrolled in the University of Miami School of Medicine because he wanted to become a doctor. In college, he met a neurosurgeon who shared Roberts' interest in electronics. The doctor advised Roberts to obtain an engineering degree before attending medical school, so Ed changed his specialization to electrical engineering.
While still a student, Roberts married Joan Clark, and when she became pregnant, he realized he would have to drop out of school to support his family. The U.S. Army offered a program where they paid for college, so in May 1962, Roberts enlisted in hopes of completing his education. After basic training, Roberts was sent to a school that trained personnel to maintain cryptographic equipment at an Air Force base in San Antonio, Texas. After finishing the course, he stayed on as an instructor. To earn extra money, Roberts worked on several projects in his spare time and even started a company called 'Reliance Engineering'. The most notable work during this period was the creation of electronic displays for a large store in San Antonio featuring Christmas characters.
In 1965, Roberts was selected for further education, and he was also required to become an officer. He obtained a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Oklahoma in 1968 and was sent to an airbase in Albuquerque to work on laser weapons. One day, Roberts and his colleagues, Forrest Mims, Stan Cagle, and Bob Zaller, came up with the idea of producing kits for model enthusiasts. This led to the creation of the new company 'MITS': Forrest Mims insisted on a name that echoed the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT. Shortly after, Roberts bought out his partners and focused on the rapidly growing market of electronic calculators.
MITS' first successful product was a kit for building electronic calculators, which appeared on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine in November 1971. These calculators became so popular that by 1973, sales exceeded one million dollars. However, a brutal price war the following year plunged the company into debt. Undeterred, Ed Roberts decided to make a comeback in the kit market with an affordable personal computer. He developed the 'Altair 8800' personal computer based on the new Intel 8080 microprocessor.
Since 'MITS' was deeply in debt, Roberts had to take out a new loan from a bank for $65,000. He promised the bank to sell around 800 computers within a year, although he himself barely hoped for 200 units. The 'Altair 8800' appeared on the cover of Popular Electronics in January 1975, and hobbyist electronics enthusiasts flooded 'MITS' with thousands of orders, eager to purchase the computer kit for $397. The company had to hire additional staff to handle the phone orders. Bill Gates and Paul Allen established a partnership with 'MITS' to develop software, and 'Altair BASIC' became Microsoft's first software product. In 1976, the company's revenue reached $6 million, and it employed 230 people.
Ed Roberts found managing a large company to be too exhausting and began looking for a suitable buyer. In 1977, Roberts sold 'MITS' to the 'Pertec' corporation, moved to Georgia, where he focused on farming, earned a medical degree, and opened a private medical practice in a small town. He was married three times. In 1962, Roberts married his peer Joan Clark, and they had five sons, Melvin, Clark, David, Edward, Martin, and a daughter, Don. However, in 1988, after 26 years of marriage, Ed and Joan divorced. In 1991, he married Donna Molden, but they also divorced. In 2000, Roberts entered into a partnership with Rosa Cooper, who remained his companion until his death.
Ed Roberts died on April 1, 2010, at the age of 68 in Macon, Georgia. He had been fighting pneumonia for several months, but the illness prevailed. Despite his passing, Roberts' contributions to the personal computer industry and his role as the 'father of the personal computer' continue to be recognized and celebrated.