A field station of an agricultural research institute in France on a foggy winter morning, on a grey metal table by the window a low wide computer box about forty-three centimetres across with a grey-brown frame and a pale grey-white front panel, across its width two rows of small black toggle switches with tiny red lamps glowing between them, the panel plain and smooth, thick grey cables running from its back across the floor and out through the window frame, beyond the glass a bare ploughed test field with a line of wooden measuring posts fading into the fog, a thermos flask and a pair of rubber boots by the door.
What it was used for
The Micral N is a microcomputer built around the Intel 8008. France's agricultural research institute INRA signed a contract in July 1972 with R2E of Châtenay-Malabry for an automatic measuring and computing unit for agronomy: to collect field readings and from them calculate evapotranspiration, the water given off by soil and plants. Delivery was in January 1973. From April 1973 R2E sold the same configuration as a production machine called Micral. It cost 8,450 francs; a PDP-8 cost roughly 45,000 francs. Petitgirard records 100 sold in the first year. It was sold into the professional world, above all for automating scientific instruments.
What was new
The Micral N used the Intel 8008 (500 kHz, about 50,000 instructions per second) as the processor of a complete machine that was actually sold, at roughly one fifth the price of a minicomputer installation. Petitgirard calls it "one of the first microcomputers marketed" and does not adopt the world's-first formula that Gernelle himself used in 1998. The Kenbak-1 of 1971 had no microprocessor; the Altair came in 1974/75. A French appeal court credited Gernelle with the invention in 1998; Petitgirard insists the work was collective. The patents were filed in February 1973 in Gernelle's name for R2E.
What the sources leave open: Priority is disputed and the best source says so itself. Price and quantity differ slightly: Petitgirard gives 8,450 francs and 100 sales in the first year; the IEEE milestone proposal gives 8,500 francs and "as many as 100" rapidly sold. The proposal is proposers' text and under review, not verified. I found no figures beyond the first year.