Microsoft Founded: The Digital Age Dawns
Bill Gates was 19 and Paul Allen was 22 when they founded Microsoft on April 4, 1975, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to sell a BASIC interpreter for the MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer. They chose Albuquerque because MITS was headquartered there. The company's first year revenue was $16,005. Allen had spotted the Altair on the cover of Popular Electronics and convinced Gates to drop out of Harvard to write software for it. Their big break came in 1980 when IBM needed an operating system for its personal computer. Microsoft bought QDOS from Seattle Computer Products for $50,000, adapted it as MS-DOS, and licensed it non-exclusively, meaning they could sell it to IBM's competitors. That single licensing decision built the Microsoft empire.
April 4, 1975
51 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on April 4
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