Tuesday, April 7, 2020
The rise of Microsoft
It’s hard to imagine but in 1975 people used typewriters until Bill Gates and Paul Allen found a company that makes computer software. They called in Microsoft. Today it is a brand name and not many people think about its origin. In fact Gates and Allen got their start developing MICROcomputer and SOFTware. That’s how they came up with this name. Bill and Gates started Microsoft to produce software Altair 8800. It's an interesting fact, but Allen quit his job as a programmer in Boston and Gates left Harvard University to focus on their company. They based it in Albuquerque, the city where MITS (the maker of the ALTAIR 8800) was based. By 1978 the company made its first million dollars developing both their version of BASIC and other programming languages and selling interpreter software to manufacturers. In 1980 the company invented MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) for IBM. In 5 years Microsoft released a new operating system – Windows 1.0. Its graphical user interface included drop-down menus, scroll bars, multitasking, and other features. It also showed off such ‘apps’ as Calendar, Clock, and Paint. The following year the company raised $61 million, moving its headquarters to Redmond, Washington. By 1995 about 90% of the world's personal computers ran Microsoft's operating systems and it’s Office products. All in all, Microsoft contributed greatly to the development of computer softwares and we should thank its creators for an opportunity to enjoy their products till today.
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It is amazing that a vision that was born in 1975 made its way to over 90% of computers by the late twentieth century. The idea of an operating system started the race that there is today, corporations versus each other, machines versus other machines. It all stemmed from the initial idea of Bill Gates and Paul Allen, almost 50 years ago.
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