Microsoft is the world's leading producer of computer
software.
Microsoft was incorporated in 1981, but the company's roots go back at least as far as 1975, when
the first commercially available
personal computer
appeared on the cover of
Popular Electronics. The
Altair 8800, as it was
called, was a rudimentary system, but it found a market for home-based computers that in turn
created a new demand: software to use with them. Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen immediately
saw the potential. Gates contacted the company that made the Altair, MITS (Micro Instrumentation
and Telemetry Systems), and offered to write a program for the new computer. Gates and Allen
created an interpreter for
BASIC, then a
mainframe
programming language, for use with the Altair. MITS hired both Gates and Allen in 1975, but by 1976
they had left to devote more time to their own fledgling company, Microsoft (from
microcomputer and
software).
