Micral N
The French company R2E was formed by two former engineers of the Intertechnique company to sell their Intel 8008-based microcomputer design. The system was originally developed at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique to automate hygrometric measurements. The system ran at 500 kHz and included 16 kB of memory, and sold for 8500 Francs, about $1300US.
A bus, called Pluribus, was introduced that allowed connection of up to 14 boards. Boards for digital I/O, analog I/O, memory, floppy disk were available from R2E. The Micral operating system was initially called Sysmic, and was later renamed Prologue.
R2E was absorbed by Groupe Bull in 1978. Although Groupe Bull continued the production of Micral computers, it was not interested in the personal computer market, and Micral computers were mostly confined to highway toll gates (where they remained in service until 1992) and similar niche markets.
Read more about this topic: History Of Personal Computers, The Beginnings of The Personal Computer Industry