Two years later,like many others entering the volatile market,it had folded. Altair sparked an entire industry as new pew personal computer companies popped up in its wake. A Harvard student and his friends,Bill Gates and Paul Allen,realized Altair Altair would be a lot better if users could program it in BASIC,a popular,easy-to-use computer language,instead of machine code. Altair 8800 got a good press splash,featured on the cover of popular Electronics magazine in January of 1975. A little calculator company in Albuquerque was struggling to compete,but a price war threatened to bankrupt it.