File:Popular Electronics Cover Jan 1975.jpg

Popular Electronics, January 1975, Volume 7 Number 1.

Ziff Davis Publishing Company. Publisher: Edgar W. Hopper, Editor: Arthur P. Salsberg, Technical Editor: Leslie Solomon, Associate Editor: Alexander W. Burawa.

This is the most famous issue of Popular Electronics. The feature story is the "Altair 8800 Minicomputer, Part 1" by H. Edward Roberts and William Yates. (Part 2 was in February.) The Altair 8800 computer on the cover is just a mock-up but it launched the home computer revolution. The authors hoped to sell a few hundred machines but sold thousands the first year.

The complete kit included an Intel 8080 microprocessor, 256 bytes of RAM, a front panel with light and switches, a metal case and an 8 amp power supply for $397. Fully assembled it was $498.

Popular Electronics was published a full month before the cover date and subscribers got their issue in the middle of the previous month. According to the copyright records, the January 1975 issue was published on November 29, 1974 (registration number B999920).

The 8.25 by 10.875 inch magazine has 112 pages. The magazine changed from digest size to letter size in August 1974. At that time the tag line "World's Largest-Selling Electronics Magazine" was moved from the Table of Contents page to the cover.

Many Ziff-Davis magazines would have two 6 issue volumes a year. Volume 7 was January to June 1975; volume 8 was July to December 1975. The volume numbers were reset in January 1972.

Popular Electronics was started by Ziff-Davis in October 1954. The magazine was renamed Computers & Electronics in November 1982 and was published until April 1985. Gernsback Publications acquired the Popular Electronics title and used it on their Hands-On Electronics magazine starting in November 1988. That version was published until December 1999.

This cover was scanned on an Epson Perfection 1240U at 300 dpi with half-tone de-screening enabled and stored as TIFF. The image was touched up in Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 and this copy saved as a 36 dpi JPEG.

• In Popular Electronics the cover is used to illustrate the most famous cover in the magazine's history.
• The cover shows the Altair 8800 computer that the author hoped would save his financially strapped company and the magazine hoped would restore technical leadership over its competitors. It did both. The computer shown on the cover is a hurriedly constructed mockup to replace the original lost in shipping to the magazine. It looks considerably different than the production computers.
• This cover launched the personal computer industry.
• Paul Allen showed this cover to his friend Bill Gates and they started Microsoft to write software for this computer.
• The resolution is minimum necessary to see the significant features of the computer shown on the cover.

• In Altair 8800 the cover is used to illustrate the launch of the Altair computer.
• The cover shows the Altair 8800 computer that the author hoped would save his financially strapped company and the magazine hoped would restore technical leadership over its competitors. It did both. The computer shown on the cover is a hurriedly constructed mockup to replace the original lost in shipping to the magazine. It looks considerably different than the production computers.
• This cover launched the personal computer industry.
• Paul Allen showed this cover to his friend Bill Gates and they started Microsoft to write software for this computer.
• The resolution is minimum necessary to see the significant features of the computer shown on the cover.

The copyrights for Popular Electronics are held by Poptronix Inc. Copyright registration number B999920, November 29, 1974.

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