Professor Suarez
Introduction to Technology
5th March, 2008
History of Microsoft
This magnificent company began on January 1, 1975 and it was founded by two brilliant
men, Bill Gates III and Paul Allen. Their adventure started with the issue of Popular Electronics,
with a headline that said “Worlds First Minicomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models”. This
demonstrated the Altair 8800, after reading this magazine Gates got in contact with the creators
of the new computer, MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), to inform them he
could demonstrate an implementation of the BASIC programming language for the system, and
in just eight weeks before the demonstration, Gates and Allen developed the interpreter. This was
an incredible success which resulted in a deal with MITS to buy the rights to Altair BASIC.
Having seen this major opportunity Bill Gates dropped out Harvard University to pursue the
Market and founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The name Microsoft, was first
used in a letter from Gates to Allen on November 29, 1975, and in November 26, 1976, the name
became a registered trademark.
The first operating system Microsoft invented was the Xenix which was released in 1980
and was later sold to Santa Cruz Operation. But the company did not have a major a success until
August 12, 1981, when IBM gave a contract to Microsoft so that they would supply them with an
adaptation of the CP/M Operating System, which was supposed to be installed in the new IBM
Personal Computer. At this moment Microsoft did not have the operating system they needed,
And so they had to buy a CP/Clone called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from
Seattle Computer Products, which Microsoft later change the name to PC-DOS and began
adapting it for the IBM PC. This contract was for $30 billion a year, gaining the right to sell
versions of what became known as MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating...