By:
December 16, 2004
Previous: 1974 / Next: 1976
Intro and links to the other years in the timeline

TECHNOLOGY

  • In the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics, the cover story describes the Altair 8800, the first successful personal computer. For $395 you can order a kit to build the Altair yourself or you can buy it assembled for $495. The Altair 8800 comes with 256 bytes of computer memory and uses Intel’s 8080 processor.
  • Excerpt from the January 1975 Popular Electronicscolumn that introduced the Altair:
    “For many years, we’ve been reading and hearing about how computers will one day be a household item. Therefore, we’re especially proud to present in this issue the first commercial type of     minicomputer project ever published that’s priced within reach of many households — the Alair 8800….”
  • Ed Roberts, the creator of the Altair personal computer, works with Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop Altair’s first programming language. Their program is a version of the BASIC computer language. The partnership between Gates and Allen is the beginning of the Microsoft company.
  • The ARPANET computer network is taken over by the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency.

THE MEDIA

  • French television begins testing its Antiope teletext service. Teletext is a text-only system without the interactivity and graphics of viewdata. The French viewdata system is called Minitel.
  • The Manhattan Cable Television service begins using a videotex and teletext Reuters news system. A consumer version of The Reuters Monitor is carried on two New York cable channels.
  • The CompuServe dial-up service becomes an independent, publicly held company.
  • News Example:
    April/May 1975 —
    The Fall of Saigon,
    New York Times.
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