Photo: Spencer Smith / CC BY 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)

Ed Roberts

エド・ロバーツ　/　えど・ろばーつ

American physician

September 13, 1941 – April 1, 2010　・　Miami, Florida, United States

Florida
physician
military officer
inventor

My Take

I keep coming back to how Ed Roberts is the rare engineer whose biggest legacy was handing the spotlight to other people. The Altair 8800 in 1974 is what lured Bill Gates and Paul Allen into writing software, and you can draw a straight line from that machine to the personal computer era. What gets me is the second act: he walked away from the industry he helped start, went to medical school, and spent his later years as a country doctor in Georgia. A Florida kid who became the father of the PC and then quietly chose to heal people instead. That arc tells you a lot about what he actually valued.

Overview

Henry Edward Roberts (September 13, 1941 – April 1, 2010) was an American engineer, entrepreneur and medical doctor who invented the first commercially successful microcomputer in 1974. He is most often known as "the father of the personal computer".

Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

1. Profile

Name (English): Ed Roberts
Name (Japanese): エド・ロバーツ
Reading: えど・ろばーつ
Born: September 13, 1941 – April 1, 2010
Zodiac / Chinese zodiac: Virgo / Snake
Origin: Miami, Florida, United States
Blood type: Private
Height: Private
Agency: Private
Occupation: physician / military officer / inventor / computer scientist / businessperson

2. Background

Elementary school: Private
Junior high: Private
High school: Miami High School
University: Oklahoma State University

3. Relationships

Spouse: Private
Children: Private
Parents: Private
Siblings: Private

4. Personality

Motto

Private

5. Works & records

Category	Title	Role	Year
Notable work	Altair 8800	—

6. Links

Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A8%E3%83%89%E3%83%BB%E3%83%AD%E3%83%90%E3%83%BC%E3%83%84

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