Funeral services for Dr. Henry Edward Roberts, a physician and one of the computing world’s influential figures, will be held Monday in Cochran. He died Thursday after a months-long bout with pneumonia.
Roberts, who was 68, made a name for himself when, in the mid-1970s, he built and sold a primitive home computer called the Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) Altair 8800, a screenless box of a machine with red light bulbs on its face that was operated by toggle switches.
The device, named after a star by his daughter Dawn, is now in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, which notes on its Web site that the machine is the one “that inaugurated the personal computer age.”
A young Bill Gates, who went on to found Microsoft, was inspired by Roberts’ creation. Gates, who later became an associate of Roberts’, visited Roberts at a Macon hospital last week.
Roberts, who, after selling his company, became a farmer and then a medical doctor — a graduate of Mercer University’s charter medical school class in 1986 — told The Telegraph in a 1995 interview that he coined the term “personal computer” in a marketing meeting for his Altair machine. He spoke of the frustration of being a somewhat forgotten pioneer.
“History has been rewritten,’’ Roberts, who wrote computer software on the side, said in the interview. “I’ve been to computer stores in Macon and asked them ‘Who invented the personal computer?’ Every time I’ve asked that question, they’ve always told me it was Apple. ... We developed an entire industry before Apple ever shipped its first personal computer. When the fiction becomes bigger than the fact, you go with the fiction. Besides, Steve Jobs is more photogenic.”
According to the Telegraph’s 15-year-old profile of Roberts, Gates “and his pal Paul Allen ... adapted the computer language BASIC for the Altair. ... The first time they tried it on an actual Altair machine was when Allen demonstrated it for Roberts. Miraculously, it worked. Roberts struck a deal with the young computer whiz on the spot.”
Though Gates was not a Roberts employee, Roberts “did hire him as a contractor to upgrade Altair BASIC,” the story noted.
After selling the computer company (his share of the sale was $3 million), Roberts, a Miami native and father of six, settled on his family’s ancestral farm in Wheeler County, outside Alamo, south of Dublin. There he dropped out of sight, at least to the computer society.
“I intentionally kept a low profile,” Roberts told The Telegraph.
But farming, raising cows, pigs, soybeans and corn, didn’t pan out for him. “I decided I wasn’t smart enough to make it farming,” Roberts said. “It’s a lot easier to make a living building computers.”
In 1982, when he was in his late 30s, he enrolled in the fledgling Mercer medical school.
“That charter class was made up of some really outstanding people, many of them older than the usual age for entering medical students, and all of them risk takers to a degree. Because Mercer at that time was a risk-taking opportunity if you wanted to be a doctor,” recalled Dr. Doug Skelton, past dean of the college’s medical school, who started there in 1985. “I heard the story after I got there about a person being in the class who had been involved in the development of the personal computer. And I thought, ‘That’s certainly far-fetched.’ But I began to check it out a little. Some people sent me some articles ... and it’s true!”
Skelton recalls the 6-foot-4 Roberts, who had a military background from the Air Force and an electrical engineering degree, as “very, very bright, obviously.”
“He did not tolerate fools easily,” Skelton said Friday. “For him, I think at times, dealing with the details of the medical education curriculum were a little boring. He was probably jumping ahead to the end of the chapter. ... But he really wanted to be a country doctor, pretty much in the old tradition in Georgia.”
Told of the Microsoft founder’s hospital visit to see Roberts last week, Skelton said, “I like Bill Gates even better hearing that he did that.”
Roberts, whose funeral is at 11 a.m. Monday at Cochran First Baptist Church, practiced medicine for more than 20 years in Bleckley County.
Dr. Richard Anderson, a Cochran dentist and close friend of Roberts’, called him “probably the smartest person I have ever talked to. ... He’s very versatile about any subject that you wanted to cover. He was a mortician at one time. He was a veterinary assistant at one time. Of course, he was an electrical engineer.”
“I think the community has suffered a major loss,” Anderson said. “When he went into the hospital, I think back in October, his practice was put on hold, put on standby.”
Dr. Jean Sumner, an internist who was a Mercer classmate of Roberts’, said he was “a person who cared about people and who really enjoyed practicing medicine because he could help people. ... I know he meant a lot to the area around Cochran.”
Sumner, who practices in Wrightsville, said, “He was brilliant. While we were all studying to get through medical school, Ed was studying to get through medical school and he was starting a software company. ... He could solve problems, and he had a mind that was really unmatched.”
The 1995 Telegraph piece noted Roberts’ passion for gadgets and scuba diving, mentioning how he was “the guy who wears a dive suit styled after the uniforms on ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’; the guy who owns nearly 300 movies on laser disc ... the guy who has a compulsion for the latest technology.”
The article also quoted Roberts, then 54, about getting older and still working.
“I think retirement is bad,” he said. “Humans don’t tolerate it too well. If you want to die, retire.”
To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.
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