Man Behind World's First Personal Computer Dies

Dr Henry Edward Roberts, the creator of the world's first working PC and a mentor to the founders of Microsoft, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, died at the age of 68, succumbing to acute pneumonia, in Georgia, US.

Mr. Roberts, who is being deeply mourned by fiends and family whose lives he had touched, had created the Altair 8800 desktop personal computer, one that resulted in the rise of the one of the first commercial PCs known.

Interestingly, a young Bill Gates and Paul Allen, had contacted Roberts and offered to create an operating system for the PC, which later developed into Altair-Basic software, which in-turn became the foundation of the Microsoft's Windows line of operating systems.

Expressing their deep sense of loss, Microsoft co-founders said in a statement that “We will always have many fond memories of working with Ed in Albuquerque, in the MITS office right on Route 66 - where so many exciting things happened that none of us could have imagined back then.”

Ed Roberts, who was the founder of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), developed Altair 8800 PC, which came without a display but a lot of buttons.