Bill Gates recalls that, when he and Paul Allen read about the Altair in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics, they understood that the price of computers would soon drop to the point that selling software for them would be a profitable business.

citation

Wikipedia contributors. (2023, December 28). Altair BASIC. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 11, 2024, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Altair_BASIC&oldid=1192303187

Star Tales - Cetus (ianridpath.com) When Cassiopeia, wife of King Cepheus of Ethiopia, boasted that she was more beautiful than the sea nymphs called the Nereids she set in motion one of the most celebrated stories in mythology, the main characters of which are commemorated among the constellations. In retribution for the insult to the Nereids, the sea god Poseidon sent a fearsome monster to ravage the coast of Cepheus’s territory. That monster, a dragon of the sea, is represented by the constellation Cetus.

Altair BASIC (Wikipedia) Altair BASIC is a discontinued interpreter for the BASIC programming language that ran on the MITS Altair 8800 and subsequent S-100 bus computers. It was Microsoft’s first product (as Micro-Soft), distributed by MITS under a contract. Altair BASIC was the start of the Microsoft BASIC product range.