An overview of Microsoft, the world's largest software company
In 1975, at a time when most Americans used typewriters, Bill Gates and Paul Allen found the world's largest software company. This article contains key facts about Microsoft as well as its brief history. On April 4, 1975, Bill Gates and his boyhood buddy Paul Allen launched Microsoft (a portmanteau of "microcomputer software") to create and market BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. MS-DOS enabled Microsoft to dominate the personal computer operating system industry during the mid-1980s Paul Allen, a Honeywell programmer, was walking around Harvard Square in late 1974 when he came upon the cover of the January 1975 edition of Popular Electronics, which featured the Altair 8800, the first microcomputer. Allen purchased the magazine and hurried to Harvard College's Currier House to present it to his high school classmate Bill Gates. They spotted the opportunity to create a BASIC implementation for the system. Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation an...