[Ed Roberts] pitched Solomon [Les Solomon, editor at *Popular Electronics*] a promise that he could build a computer around the new, more powerful Intel 8080 processor. This pitch became Altair—named, according to legend, by Solomon’s daughter, after the destination of the *Enterprise* in the *Star Trek* episode “Amok Time”—and it set the hobby electronics world on fire when it appeared as the January 1975 *Popular Electronics* cover story.

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From ACS to Altair: The Rise of the Hobby Computer (technichistory.com) A certain pattern of technological development recurred many times in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century: a scattered hobby community, tinkering with a new idea, develops it to the point where those hobbyists can sell it as a product. This sets off a frenzy of small entrepreneurial firms, competing to sell to other hobbyists and early adopters. Finally, a handful of firms grow to the point where they can drive down costs through economies of scale and put their smaller competitors out of business. Bicycles, automobiles, airplanes, and radio broadcasting all developed more or less in this way.