Word: altair
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...first personal computer kit, the Altair 8800, goes on sale...
...founder of Microsoft. The child Gates has neat hair and an eager, pleasant smile; every last detail says "pat me on the head." He entered Harvard but dropped out to found Microsoft in 1975. Microsoft's first product was a version of the programming language BASIC for the Altair 8800, arguably the world's first personal computer. BASIC, invented by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz in 1964, was someone else's idea. So was the Altair. Gates merely plugged one into the other, cream-cheesed the waiting bagel and came up with a giant...
...chip could be programmed to do any number of tasks, from running a watch to steering a spacecraft. It could also serve as the soul of a new machine: the personal computer. By 1975 the first of the new breed of computers had appeared, a hobbyist machine called the Altair 8800 (cost: $395 in kit form, $621 assembled). The Altair soon vanished from the marketplace. But already there were other young and imaginative tinkerers out in Silicon Valley getting ready to produce personal computers, including one bearing an odd symbol: an apple with a bite taken out of it. Suddenly...
...operate with only a commercial pilot's rating, which requires 200 hours of flying time. Pilots for the first-level trunk carriers need an air-transport rating, which requires a minimum of 1,200 hours. Some of the larger third-levels, like Philadelphia's eight-plane Altair, demand that their pilots have trunk-style experience. But the smaller third-levels, many of them Mom-and-Pop outfits with one or two single-engine planes, generally...
...largely unexplored rain forests of Brazil's Rondonia territory. After Von Puttkamer had befriended the tribesmen and learned their language, they led him to three secret caves decorated with mysterious markings. Recognizing the possible significance of the site, Von Puttkamer decided to call in expert help: Anthropologist Altair Sales of the Catholic University of Goiás. After exploring the caverns and questioning the Indians about them, Sales emerged from the jungle with an astonishing conclusion: the caves, he says, were inhabited long ago by warlike women remarkably similar to those described by Francisco de Orellana...