Microsoft will celebrate its 50th anniversary tomorrow (founded on April 4, 1975). On this occasion, co-founder Bill Gates is releasing the source code of Altair Basic, Microsoft’s first software, to the public.
Gates revealed that he and Paul Allen (passed away in 2018) used DEC’s PDP-10 machine in Harvard University’s computer lab to practice programming. In 1975, when MITS introduced the Altair 8800 minicomputer and advertised it in Popular Electronics magazine, they saw this as the beginning of the era of personal computers.
Gates contacted Ed Roberts, the founder of MITS, to inform him about BASIC software that runs on Intel 8008 chips, the same ones in Altair 8800 – a bluff! Allen had to create a simulation of BASIC on a PDP-10 since there was no real Altair machine to test it on. Gates took on the task of creating the main program code alongside another friend, Monte Davidoff (later became Microsoft’s second employee), who developed the mathematical package code. The three of them worked tirelessly day and night for 2 months to create the software that was promised.
Once the software was completed, they showcased the demo to Ed Roberts and it was a success. MITS agreed to purchase the software license, leading Gates and Allen to decide to open a company called Micro-Soft that same year (later removing the hyphen from the name).
The code can be downloaded as a scanned PDF image from the original paper.
Source – Bill Gates
TLDR: Microsoft turns 50 tomorrow. Bill Gates releases Altair Basic source code, marking the start of personal computing. Gates and Paul Allen created the software on a PDP-10, leading to the founding of Microsoft.
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