The passing of an era
2010
Many people are not aware of the fact that Albuquerque gave birth to both the Personal Computer, and Microsoft.
Today, we get word that Dr. Edwards, who developed the hardware for the first personal computer has passed away.
With the passing of Dr. Henry Edward Roberts, I am reminded of one of Albuquerque’s first failings – the loss of Microsoft, which was incorporated in our fair city, to Bill Gate’s home town of Redmond (Seattle area), WA.
This was Albuquerque’s first wake up call that they needed to focus on one of the four factors of production, that it wasn’t enough to just have more PhD’s per capita than the rest of the country, they needed to have access to capital, because without it, companies had to move to other locales that could provide money for their expansion.
The Los Angeles Times has a great obituary for Dr. Edwards that includes his time as a Sandia Labs scientist and the founding of his company, MITS.
