I ran across this most excellent podcast the other day. I think you must listen to it, if you are interested in the early days of personal computers or electronics.

If you don’t know, MITS was the company that developed and sold the Altair. Forrest wrote the original documentation for the Altair.

http://www.theamphour.com/171-an-interview-with-forrest-mims-snell-solisequious-scientist/

I only have one book by Forrest, it’s “Engineer’s Mini-notebook: Op Amp IC Circuits”. It’s where I learned about using opamps and though published years ago, it is still relevant.

By the way, the SCELBI, the MARK-8 and possibly some other machines came out before the Altair, so he doesn’t have his facts perfectly right. Certainly the Altair made a huge impact on the hobby, but it wasn’t the first.