Popular Electronics and Radio-Electronics
In January 1972, Popular Electronics changed its editorial focus in an attempt to attract more advertising revenues. Reviews of stereo equipment and citizens band radio were featured; experimenter and constructions projects were gone. Dan Meyer, Don Lancaster, Forrest Mims, John Simonton and many other authors immediately started contributing to the competing Radio-Electronics magazine. The June 1972 cover story was "Experimenting with a $32 Solid State Laser" by Forrest Mims. Another article in that issue was "Experiments with Op-Amps" by B.R. Rogen; this was a pseudonym of Popular Electronics technical editor, Les Solomon. Solomon wrote articles for Radio-Electronics while working for Popular Electronics. Lou Garner, the longtime solid-state editor, moved to Radio-Electronics for a year. Several MITS kit projects were featured in Radio-Electronics including the ITC 1800 Integrated Circuit Tester (May 1972), the Model 1700 Function Generator (July 1973), the Model 1440 Calculator (July 1973) and the 88 VLCT Computer Terminal (November 1974).
Radio-Electronics had a smaller circulation than Popular Electronics but led the way with innovative construction projects between 1972 and 1975. John Simonton's first modular electronic music synthesizer was featured on the cover of the May 1973 issue. It sold for a fraction of commercial synthesizers and his PAiA Electronics produced them for decades. Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter in September 1973 and Jon Titus's Mark-8 computer in July 1974 were the catalyst of the home computer revolution.
Art Salsberg became the editor of Popular Electronics in 1974 with a goal of reclaiming the lead in projects. He wanted to publish a computer project that was more functional and elegant that the Mark-8. Les Solomon knew MITS was working on an Intel 8080 based computer project and thought Roberts could provide the project for the always popular January issue.
Ed Roberts and Bill Yates finished the first prototype in October 1974 and shipped it to Popular Electronics in New York via the Railway Express Agency. However, it never arrived due to a strike by the shipping company. Solomon already had a number of pictures of the machine and the article was based on them. Roberts got to work on building a replacement. The computer on the magazine cover is an empty box with just switches and LEDs on the front panel. The finished Altair computer had a completely different circuit board layout than the prototype shown in the magazine.
Read more about this topic: Micro Instrumentation And Telemetry Systems