Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 5: Artist-Programmer Era (1970s)
1975
Altair 8800 Microcomputer
First truly personal computers to sell in large numbers. It was available in 1975 for $397 as a kit and appeared on the January 1975 cover of Popular Electronics. This stands as another example of the microcomputer’s emergence in the ’70s that helped spur the second wave of computer art.
Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.
Sources
Movements
computer art
Filed under
- Ideas
- Microcomputer Art
- Technologies
- Altair 8800, computer art, microcomputer, personal computer
- Organisations
- Popular Electronics
Related moments
Echoes across time
- 1951 · Edmund C. Berkeley Begins Publishing Computers and Automation
- 1990 · Computers and the Creative Process at the University of Oregon Museum of Art
- 1992 · Leicester Polytechnic officially Becomes De Montfort University
Le Random editorials
Le Random podcast
- Timeline Ch 5—Artist-Programmer Era (1970s) with Joan Truckenbrod, Hans Dehlinger & Anika Meier — listen with transcript on Le Random (14 Jan 2024, 65 min). Chapter 5’s episode. Apple Podcasts · Spotify