FOUNDING A NEW COMPANY
A native of Seattle, Washington, Gates became interested in computer programming when he was in high school. In 1973, he began his undergraduate studies at Harvard, where he lived in the same dormitory as Steve Ballmer. In February of 1975, at the age of 19, Gates and Honeywell employee Paul Allen, a childhood friend of Gates, began tinkering with a computer language known as BASIC (Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). The partners soon developed a version of BASIC for Albuquerque, New Mexico-based MITS, manufacturer of Altair, the world's first personal computer (PC). Because the creators of BASIC, two mathematics professors at Dartmouth College, had never copyrighted or patented the language, programmers throughout the world had customized BASIC to meet their needs. Gates and Allen used variations of BASIC as the basis for their new company, Microsoft, formally founded on April 4, 1975. Eventually, Gates also created DiskBASIC, a disk management program. Other variations of BASIC eventually formed the core of many of Micro-soft's most successful products. For example, Visual BASIC was created in the early 1990s to serve an object-oriented language for Microsoft Windows applications. QBASIC was developed to serve an interpreter between BASIC and Microsoft's DOS and Windows platforms; it superseded GW-BASIC, the interpreter designed specifically for DOS.
In 1976, Gates dropped out of Harvard in order to devote more time to his new business. He moved the headquarters to Albuquerque, New Mexico and hired four new computer software programmers. Aside from his innovations with BASIC, Gates's first major impact on the computer industry came in the form of a legal contract. Gates devised an agreement which allowed hardware developers to use and sell variations of proprietary software languages. This contract eventually served as a model for future software licensing deals.
In the late 1970s, Gates oversaw the development and release of software products based on versions of Fortran and COBOL-80. He also inked deals to license BASIC software to Radio Shack and Apple Computer. Sales reached $1 million, and Microsoft became the leading microcomputer language distributor in the United States, due in large part to the deal Gates struck with firms like Sirius, Zenith Electronics, Sharp, and Texas Instruments, who started using Microsoft software on a rudimentary operating system known as CP/M. Believing that international markets were just as important as North American ones, Gates launched operations in Japan. He also moved headquarters to Bellevue, Washington.
Microsoft sold its one millionth copy of BASIC in 1980. By then, employees totaled 25, and sales had reached $2.5 million. In November of that year, Gates forged an alliance with IBM Corp. that would help to position Microsoft at the core of the PC industry. Microsoft became the exclusive developer of not only several programming languages, but also the operating system for IBM's first PCs. To allow BASIC to operate on Apple II machines, Microsoft introduced technology known as Softcard.
When Gates and Allen incorporated their company on June 25, 1981, Gates took over as president and chairman of the board, while Allen adopted the role of executive vice president. Two months later, Microsoft completed its MS-DOS operating system, allowing IBM to begin selling its new PCs. More than 50 microcomputer manufacturers had signed MS-DOS licensing agreements with Microsoft by the end of the year. Gates pushed into Europe in 1982, with the establishment of a unit in Great Britain. Microsoft's major product release that year, the Multiplan Electronic Worksheet, was named software product of the year by InfoWorld magazine.
User Comments Add a comment…