It is speculative but plausible to guess that the 1965 release of the PDP-8 might have instigated Gray’s own home computer project and the later creation of the ACS.

inspiration of

Botswana (Wikipedia) Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, Zambia to the north and Zimbabwe to the northeast. Being a country of slightly over 2.4 million people, and roughly the size of France, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. It is essentially the nation state of the Tswana people, who make up 79% of the population.

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.