Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:03, 5 March 2025

Revision as of 22:03, 5 March 2025

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To fund the new project, Roberts sold 15% of MITS to fellow Air Force officer, Lieutenant William Yates. He also got an investment from another Weapons Laboratory officer, Major Ed Laughlin. Several other officers and scientists at the lab were interested in this state of the art calculator kit and helped with the design. Forrest Mims wrote the assembly manual in return for a calculator kit.

The MITS 816 was known as a "four-function" calculator; it could add, subtract, multiply and divide. The display was only 8- digits but the calculations were done to 16- digits of accuracy. The custom molded case gave the kit a professional appearance; the kit was $179 and an assembled unit was $275. The MITS 816 was featured on the November 1971 cover of ''[[Popular Electronics]]''.<ref name = "MITS 816">{{cite magazine | last = Roberts | first = Ed | date = November 1971 | title = Electronic desk calculator you can build |magazine= Popular Electronics | volume = 35 | issue = 5 | pages =27–32 | url=https://archive.org/details/popularelectroni35unse_3/page/27/mode/1up | url-access=registration}}</ref> Thousands of calculator orders came in each month, in contrast to poor results for previous kits that MITS had offered.<ref name = "Albq Journal Oct 1971">{{cite news | last = Cliff | first = W. Wilson | title = Little Firm in City Making Big Name with Calculator | work = Albuquerque Journal | page = G-2 | quote = But hundreds of thousands of electronics enthusiasts the world over have read about MITS within the last 10 days and no less than 200 already bought the light-weight 16-digit electronic calculator… | date = October 31, 1971}}</ref>

The steady flow of calculator sales allowed MITS to run full page advertisements in ''Radio-Electronics'', ''Popular Electronics'' and ''Scientific American''. In the June 1972 ''Radio-Electronics'', MITS announced a 14 digit calculator (Model 1440) with memory and square root function for $199.95 kit and $249.95 assembled. The original 816 kit was reduced from $179 to $149.95. Both calculators could be controlled by upcoming programming unit.<ref name = "RE June 1972">{{cite magazine | title = MITS announces our forth generation. |magazine= Radio-Electronics | volume = 43 | issue = 6 | page =13 | date = June 1972}} Full page advertisement of the Model 1440 calculator.</ref>