The "father of the personal computer" who kick-started the careers of Microsoft founders² Bill Gates and Paul Allen has died at the age of 68.

开启微软创建者比尔·盖茨和保罗·艾伦人生事业的“个人电脑之父”，亨利·爱德华·罗伯茨逝世，享年68岁。

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Dr Roberts died after a long bout of pneumonia

Dr Henry Edward Roberts was the inventor of the Altair 8800, a machine that sparked the home computer era（时代，年代） .

Gates and Allen contacted Dr Roberts after seeing the machine on the front cover of a magazine and offered to write software for it.

The program was known as Altair-Basic, the foundation of Microsoft's business.

"Ed was willing to take a chance（冒险） on us - two young guys interested in computers long before they were commonplace - and we have always been grateful to him," the Microsoft founders said in a statement.

"The day our first untested software worked on his Altair was the start of a lot of great things."

Apple co-founder¹ Steve Wozniak told technology website CNET that Dr Roberts had taken " a critically important step that led to everything we have today".

'Fond memories'

Dr Roberts was the founder of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), originally set up to sell electronics kits⁶ to model rocket hobbyists（业余爱好者） .

The company went on to sell electronic calculator kits, but was soon overshadowed（使阴暗，使失色） by bigger firms.

In the mid-1970's, with the firm struggling with debt, Dr Roberts began to develop a computer kit⁵ for hobbyists.

The result was the Altair 8800, a machine operated by switches and with no display.

It took its name from the then-cutting edge Intel 8080 microprocessor⁷.

The $395 kit (around £1,000 today) was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics in 1975, prompting a flurry（慌张，疾风） of orders. It was also sold assembled for an additional $100 charge.

Amongst those interested in the machine were Paul Allen and Bill Gates.

The pair contacted Dr Roberts, offering to write software code that would help people program the machine.

The pair eventually moved to Albuquerque - the home of MITS - where they founded Micro-Soft, as it was then known, to develop their software: a variant⁸ of the Beginners All-purpose Symbolic⁹ Instruction Code (Basic).

"We will always have many fond memories of working with Ed in Albuquerque, in the MITS office right on Route 66 - where so many exciting things happened that none of us could have imagined back then," the pair said.

Dr Roberts sold his company in 1977.

He died in hospital on 1 April after a long bout（回合，一阵） of pneumonia（肺炎） .