The Altair 8800 Computer was one of the first "affordable" computers. It came into existance as a direct result of efforts made by the Homebrew Computer Club. For only hundreds of dollars you could make one using reasonably available components. It took a lot of imagination to see the resulting machine as useful though. Despite that, many people tried. One of the more successful was Micro-Soft, whose early fundraising appeal was sent around for us to look at.