This April 4, marks another year since the founding of. Microsoftthe technology giant that owns Windows, Xbox and is currently a major investor in OpenAI, the most advanced company in artificial intelligence research.
The company is now one of the world’s largest in computing and informatics, but it had a strong journey through which to advance to become what it is today. How was this company founded?
This is how Microsoft was founded in 1975
They are Bill Gates y Paul Allen the founding heads of this project.
The former met the latter at the elite Lakeside private school in Seattle in the early 1970s.
They would team up in 1975 on a proposal that would change their lives: they offered the MITS company to implement the BASIC programming language for their microcomputer called the Altair 8000.
Gates, who was studying at Harvard University, made a key decision: he left the institution and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the MITS company was located to work on this program.
It is there that on April 4, 1975, he founded Microsofta name that comes from the words microcomputer and software. The term was not coined until November of that year, in a letter from Gates to Allen, and was initially spelled “Micro-Soft”.
After establishing the first overseas sales office, in Japan in 1978, Microsoft moved from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington.
The success of Microsoft would arrive soon: with Apple starting to grow strongly, IBM wanted a competitive system that could stand up to the competition and solidify itself in the market.
The company would adapt the CP/M operating system by purchasing a copy called 86-DOS, which was renamed PC-DOS. To avoid hassles, IBM distributed different versions at different prices, with the $40 MS-DOS being the most affordable and the one that became a standard.
Thanks to contract flexibility, Microsoft began to improve it and was able to sell operating system units to more companies, thus becoming one of the leading software vendors in the growing personal computer industry.
How was the first Windows born?
The success of Microsoft with third-party operating systems caused it to also have this need to maintain an even product for all computers that did not have Apple’s system.
But Gates was resourceful and wanted to get things that Apple already had: a nice graphical environment. Forging a mini-alliance with Apple, Microsoft legally obtained tools to improve its own visual section, with which it would go to market in 1985 with. Windows 1.0the early version of the system used by many computers today.
Bill Gates said, “It’s unique software designed for the serious PC user.”
The system now had pull-down menus, scrollable bars, icons, and dialog boxes that made it easier to learn and use the programs. You could switch between multiple programs without having to exit and restart them individually.
“Windows 1.0 comes with several programs, including MS-DOS file management, Paint, Windows Writer, Notepad, and Calculator, as well as a calendar, card file, and clock to help manage daily activities. There’s even a game: Reversi,” reads a reminder from the company itself.
The rest is history. In 1989 we would see the inclusion of the Office suite for the first time. In 1990 Windows 3.0 would bring the classics Solitaire, Hearts and Minesweeper. And from 1995, the maturity of the operating systems would begin with Windows 95.
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