In 1986, three judges at The Computer Museum, Boston – Apple II designer and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak, early MITS employee and PC World publisher David Bunnell, and the museum's associate director and curator Oliver Strimpel – awarded the title of "first personal computer using a microprocessor" to the 1973 Micral.

[3] The Micral N was the earliest commercial, non-kit personal computer based on a microprocessor (in this case, the Intel 8008).

That machine did not have a one-chip CPU but instead was based purely on small-scale integration TTL chips.

[6] R2E founder André Truong Trong Thi (EFREI degree, Paris), a French immigrant from Vietnam, asked Frenchman François Gernelle to develop the Micral N computer for the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), starting in June 1972.

Lacombe was responsible for the memory system, I/O high speed channel, power supply and front panel.

[12] It was delivered to the INRA in January 1973, and commercialized in February 1973 for FF 8,500 (about $1,750) making it a cost-effective replacement for minicomputers which augured the era of the PC.

A year would pass before the first North American microcomputer, SCELBI, was advertised in the March 1974 issue of QST, an amateur radio magazine.

An 8-inch floppy disk reader was added to the Micral in December 1973, following a command of the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique.

In November 1975, R2E signed Warner & Swasey Company as the exclusive manufacturer and marketer of the Micral line in the United States and Canada.

[16] R2E and Warner & Swasey displayed the Micral M[17] multiple microcomputer system at the June 1976 National Computer Conference.

The 8080-based Micral C[19], an intelligent CRT terminal designed for word processing and automatic typesetting, was introduced in July 1977.

[24]The R2E Micral CCMC Portal[25] portable microcomputer made its official appearance in September 1980 at the SICOB show in Paris.

It was designed and marketed by the studies and developments department of François Gernelle of the French firm R2E Micral at the request of the company CCMC specializing in payroll and accounting.

Truong's R2E sold about 90,000 units of the Micral that were mostly used in vertical applications such as highway toll booths and process control.