Forrest Mims - Air Force and MITS

Air Force and MITS

After graduating from Texas A&M in 1966, Mims became a commissioned officer in the U.S. Air Force and was assigned to Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon, Vietnam as an intelligence officer in early 1967. Mims had been interested in model rocketry since high school and brought a supply of rockets to Vietnam. He used a nearby horse racing track as a launch site to test his rocket guidance systems. After an Army helicopter gunship came to check out the rocket launches, Mims learned to notify military authorities before launching rockets at the race track. A night launch from the roof of his apartment house caused an alert at Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Mims' rocket exploits were reported in the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes.

Mims tested his infrared travel aid at the Saigon School for Blind Boys and Girls in Saigon and the story appeared in many U.S. newspapers. Colonel David R. Jones of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory learned of Mims's experiments on a trip to Vietnam and arranged for Mims to be assigned to the Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Colonel Jones had to make special arrangements because Mims did not have the required engineering degree. Mims arrived at the lab in March 1968 and worked on various laser projects.

Mims organized the Albuquerque Model Rocketry Club to interest students in model rocketry. The club soon had 40 members and held meetings at Del Norte High School and the Albuquerque Academy. In July 1969 several club members attended the Southwestern Model Rocket Conference at Eastern New Mexico University. George Flynn, Publisher of Model Rocketry magazine, attended the conference where he interviewed Mims and some of the club members. The club president, high school student Ford Davis, gave a presentation on a miniature radio transmitter developed by the club that could relay data from a model rocket in flight. Mims, the club's senior advisor, told Flynn about the various sensors and telemetry equipment used by the club. Flynn invited Mims to write an article about his "Transistorized Tracking Light for Night Launched Model Rockets" and it was published in the September 1969 issue of Model Rocketry. Mims earned $93.50 for his first article as a professional writer and became a regular contributor to Model Rocketry.

Ed Roberts worked with Mims at the Weapons Laboratory and was also interested in electronics and model rockets. Roberts augmented his Air Force salary with an off-duty company, Reliance Engineering. Mims, Roberts and two other co-workers decided they could design and sell model rocket electronics kits to hobbyists. The December 1969 issue of Model Rocketry carried a press release written by Mims announcing that Reliance Engineering had formed a subsidiary company, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems. They designed and built the telemetry modules in their homes and garages but they were only able to sell a few hundred units.

Mims background in the new technology of light-emitting diodes allowed him to sell a feature story to Popular Electronics magazine. Their monthly circulation was 400,000 readers compared to Model Rocketry circulation of 15,000. The five-page article would give an overview of the device physics and typical applications; it would be featured on the November 1970 cover. Mims asked the editors if they also wanted a project story and they agreed. Ed Roberts and Mims developed an LED communicator that would transmit voice on an infrared beam of light to a receiver hundreds of feet away. Readers could buy a kit of parts to build the Opticom LED Communicator from MITS for $15. MITS sold just over hundred kits. MITS was not making money on the kits and magazine articles paid $400. Mims was out of the Air Force and wanted to pursue a career as a technology writer. Roberts bought out his original partners and focused the company on emerging market of electronic calculators. The January 1975 cover of Popular Electronics featured Roberts' Altair 8800 computer. Roberts asked Mims to write the Altair 8800 user’s manual in return for an assembled Altair, which Mims donated to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in 1987.