Microsoft

(History + Corporate Culture)

Prepared by Anton Sauchanka

History of the company
Creators

Company Microsoft was founded in

1975 by two people: 19-years old
Bill Gates, who was a National Merit
Scholar studying 2nd year in Harvard
College, and 22-years old Paul Allen,
who worked as a programmer since
leaving the University of
Washington after 2 years of study.
A small trick
The idea that would spawn Microsoft initiated when
Paul Allen showed Bill Gates the first of January, 1975
issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the
microcomputer Altair 8800. Allen and Gates saw
potential to develop an implementation of
the programming language BASIC interpreter for the
system. Bill Gates called the creators of the
new microcomputer, Micro Instrumentation and
Telemetry Systems (MITS), offering to demonstrate
the implementation in order to win a contract with
the company. Allen and Gates had neither an
interpreter nor an Altair system, yet in the eight
weeks before the demo, they developed an
interpreter. When Allen flew to Albuquerque to meet
with MITS, the interpreter worked and MITS agreed
to distribute Altair BASIC. 
Very beginning
Thus, Allen and Gates left Boston,
where Allen worked for Honeywell and
Gates was enrolled in Harvard, moved to
Albuquerque (where MITS was located),
and co-founded Microsoft there.
Company’s name, offered by Allen
and used further, is a mixture of two
words “microcomputer” and “software”.
On November 26, 1976 the company was
registered under that name with the
Secretary of State of New Mexico
The company's first international
office was founded on November 1,
1978, in Japan, entitled "ASCII Microsoft"
(now called "Microsoft Japan").

Microcomputer + Software