Microsoft Found (1975)
Microsoft is obviously one of the most important companies in the history of computers and the Internet. Microsoft was founded in 1975 by William H. Gates III (mostly known as just Bill Gates) and Paul Allen. The duo had teamed up in high school through their interest in programming operatings systems and software on the original PDP-10 computer from the Digital Equipment Corporation.
In 1975 Popular Electronics magazine featured a cover story on the Altair 8800, the first personal computer (PC) available to the masses through mail order. Bill Gates and Paul Allen grabbed the opportunity to transform this immature PC into a breakthrough -- the Altair required software, a computer programming language that could make it execute functional computing tasks. That's when it all began.
Writing BASIC For The Altair
The Popular Electronics article prompted Gates and Allen to formulate a version of the BASIC programming language for the Altair. Allen, working for Honeywell, and his friend, Gates, a sophomore at Harvard, instantly set out to configure the first personal computer language for the Altair, called BASIC.
They worked in marathon 24-hour sittings to finish a functioning product, which then was licensed to MITS. Shortly after, Allen took a position with MITS as director of Software Development, and Gates followed him later that year to organize an informal partnership named Microsoft (originally Micro-soft) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to produce variations of BASIC for different computer companies.
Microsoft's Rise To Dominance
In their first year in business, Microsoft had a total of three employees, Allen, Gates, and Ric Weiland and earned revenues in the amount of $16,005. Microsoft’s first customers included freshman computer hardware firms such as Apple Inc., manufacturer of the Apple II computer; Commodore, producer of the PET computer; and Tandy Corporation, maker of the Radio Shack TRS-80 computer. In 1977 Microsoft shipped its second language product, Microsoft Fortran, and it before long issued versions of BASIC for the 8080 and 8086 microprocessors.
With the development of the DOS operating system, Microsoft would sood become a giant in the computer industry. Later they would capitalize on the market share they had gained with DOS when they released the Windows operating system. Microsoft Windows remains the primary operating system used on most computers today.
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