Microsoft (the word being a portmanteau of "microcomputer software") was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO), and subsequent rise in its share price, created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions, their largest being the acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in December 2016, followed by their acquisition of Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in May 2011.
Introduction
Microsoft
Microsoft | Introduction
April 4, 1975 April 4, 1975. 4 April, 1975. April 4, 1975.
system requirements for windows 10 pro 32 bit
user
7 GB of disk space, The 64-bit variants require a CPU, USB flash drive etc
assistant
who is the developer of this operating system?
user
Microsoft
assistant
when was this 10 version first released to the public?
user
July 29, 2015
assistant
on what devices can this operating system be installed?
user
PCs, tablets, smartphones, embedded systems, Xbox One, Surface Hub and Mixed Reality.
assistant
what are some of the special features of this system?
user
Microsoft Edge web browser,  a virtual desktop system, Task View, support for fingerprint and face recognition login are some of them.
assistant
what are some of the editions of this system?
user
Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro are some them.
assistant
name a few patch updates which were released for the system?
user
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
assistant
you had mentioned the developer's name earlier, where is the developer headquartered?
user
Redmond, Washington
assistant
who is the founder?
user
Bill Gates and Paul Allen
assistant
when was it founded?
user
Microsoft is a multinational computer technology corporation. Microsoft was founded on April 4, 1975, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Its current best-selling products are the Microsoft Windows operating system; Microsoft Office, a suite of productivity software; Xbox, a line of entertainment of games, music, and video; Bing, a line of search engines; and Microsoft Azure, a cloud services platform. In 1980, Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM to bundle Microsoft's operating system with IBM computers; with that deal, IBM paid Microsoft a royalty for every sale. In 1985, IBM requested Microsoft to develop a new operating system for their computers called OS/2.
History of Microsoft | Introduction
When Allen flew to Albuquerque to meet with MITS, the interpreter worked and MITS agreed to distribute Altair BASIC. Allen moved to Albuquerque, Gates soon quit Harvard to join him, and they co-founded Microsoft there. Revenues of the company totalled $16,005 by the end of 1976. Allen came up with the original name of "Micro-Soft", a portmanteau of microcomputer and software. Hyphenated in its early incarnations, 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"), and on November 29, 1979, the term, "Microsoft" was first used by Bill Gates.
History of Microsoft | 1975–1985: The founding of Microsoft
Microsoft (the word being a portmanteau of "microcomputer software") was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO), and subsequent rise in its share price, created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions, their largest being the acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in December 2016, followed by their acquisition of Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in May 2011.
Microsoft | Introduction
Microsoft eventually became the leading PC operating systems vendor. The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with a publishing division named Microsoft Press. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkin's disease. Allen claimed in "Idea Man: A Memoir by the Co-founder of Microsoft" that Gates wanted to dilute his share in the company when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease because he did not think that he was working hard enough. Allen later invested in low-tech sectors, sports teams, commercial real estate, neuroscience, private space flight, and more.
Microsoft | 1972–1985: Founding
Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen sought to make a business using their skills in computer programming. In 1972, they founded Traf-O-Data, which sold a rudimentary computer to track and analyze automobile traffic data. Gates enrolled at Harvard University while Allen pursued a degree in computer science at Washington State University, though he later dropped out to work at Honeywell. The January 1975 issue of "Popular Electronics" featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems's (MITS) Altair 8800 microcomputer, which inspired Allen to suggest that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device. Gates called MITS and claimed that he had a working interpreter, and MITS requested a demonstration.
Microsoft | 1972–1985: Founding
Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter, and it worked flawlessly when they demonstrated it to MITS in March 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. MITS agreed to distribute it, marketing it as Altair BASIC. Gates and Allen established Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Gates as CEO, and Allen suggested the name "Micro-Soft", short for micro-computer software. In August 1977, the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office of ASCII Microsoft. Microsoft moved its headquarters to Bellevue, Washington in January 1979. Microsoft entered the operating system (OS) business in 1980 with its own version of Unix called Xenix, but it was MS-DOS that solidified the company's dominance.
Microsoft | 1972–1985: Founding
In late 1974, Paul Allen, a programmer at Honeywell, was walking through Harvard Square when he saw the cover of the January 1975 issue of "Popular Electronics" that demonstrated the Altair 8800, the first microcomputer. Allen bought the magazine and rushed to Currier House at Harvard College, where he showed it to high school friend Bill Gates. They saw potential to develop an implementation of BASIC for the system. Gates called Altair manufacturer Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), offering to demonstrate the implementation. Allen and Gates had neither an interpreter nor an Altair system, yet in the eight weeks before the demo, they developed an interpreter with the help of Monte Davidoff.
History of Microsoft | 1975–1985: The founding of Microsoft
On January 1, 1979, the company moved from Albuquerque to a new home in Bellevue, Washington, since it was hard to recruit top programmers to Albuquerque. Shortly before the move, eleven of the then-thirteen employees posed for the staff photo on the right.
History of Microsoft | 1975–1985: The founding of Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation based in Redmond, Washington, USA and founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing. Due to the scope and size of the company, it encompasses a broad range of topics mostly revolving around critical analysis and the company's products and services.
Outline of Microsoft | Introduction
Bill Gates and Paul Allen, founders of Microsoft Corporation, attended the Lakeside School, a private middle and high school in Haller Lake, at the northern Seattle city limits. This turned out to have rather dramatic consequences for the entire Seattle area. Microsoft's first product, Microsoft BASIC, came out in 1976. The company was incorporated in New Mexico the same year. By 1978 sales exceeded one million dollars a year. In 1979, Microsoft moved its offices back to Redmond from Albuquerque, New Mexico—they had gone to New Mexico to be near a client who no longer dominated their business, Gates and Allen wanted to go back where they were from, and it was easier to entice quality programmers to the Seattle area than the deserts of New Mexico.
History of Seattle since 1940 | Silicon Forest: 1985–present
Allen and Gates formed Microsoft in 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and began marketing a BASIC programming language interpreter, with their first employee being high school friend and collaborator Ric Weiland. Allen came up with the name of "Micro-Soft", a combination of "microcomputer" and "software". Microsoft committed to delivering a disk operating system (DOS) to IBM for the original IBM PC in 1980, although they had not yet developed one, and Allen spearheaded a deal for Microsoft to purchase QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) written by Tim Paterson who was employed at Seattle Computer Products. As a result of this transaction, Microsoft secured a contract to supply the DOS that ran on IBM's PC line and led to Allen's and Gates' wealth and success.
Paul Allen | Microsoft
Microsoft, now one of the world's largest software companies, was founded in 1975 when Paul Allen and Bill Gates came to Albuquerque to write software for the Altair. The company's headquarters remained in the city until 1979.
History of Albuquerque, New Mexico | 1960s and 70s
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, software developer, and philanthropist. He is best known as the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He is one of the best-known entrepreneurs and pioneers of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Gates co-founded Microsoft with childhood friend Paul Allen in 1975, in Albuquerque, New Mexico; it went on to become the world's largest personal computer software company.
Bill Gates | Introduction
Paul Allen (1953–2018) was an American businessman and co-founder of Microsoft. Paul Allen may also refer to:
Paul Allen (disambiguation) | Introduction
It was also declared the "International Women's Year" by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe. Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
1975 | Introduction
Allen convinced Gates to drop out of Harvard in order to create Microsoft.
Paul Allen | Early life
The company was founded in 2008 and launched its first products in 2008. The company is privately held. The company's headquarters are in Silicon Valley. Recent acclaims include "Microsoft Startup to Watch" "Startup of the Day" and finalist at the HYSTA Entrepreneur Boot Camp
Loqu8 | History and ownership
Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He was best known for co-founding Microsoft Corporation with childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which helped spark the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, later making Microsoft the world's largest personal computer software company. Allen was ranked as the 44th-wealthiest person in the world by "Forbes" in 2018, with an estimated net worth of $20.3 billion at the time of his death. Allen left active operations at Microsoft in early 1983 after a Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis, remaining on its board as vice chairman.
Paul Allen | Introduction
This is a timeline of Microsoft, a multinational computer technology corporation.
Timeline of Microsoft | Introduction
The company was incorporated on 31 October 2005. Based in Durham, NC, it was founded on November 10 by IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat, and Sony. NEC subsequently became a Member. In December 2013, Google became a Member. In July 2016, it was announced that Toyota became a Member. On October 10, 2018, Erich Andersen announced that Microsoft joined as a licensee. Canonical and TomTom are Associate Members. Keith Bergelt is the chief executive of the company. Bergelt had previously served as President and CEO of Paradox Capital, LLC As of December, 2019 membership in the OIN stood at approximately 3,100 companies.
Open Invention Network | History
h Club London was founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen through his investment company Vulcan Inc. and musician David A. Stewart (formerly of the band Eurythmics), producer and Founder of Weapons of Mass Entertainment.
The Hospital Club | Description
Microsoft created Windows CE 1.0, a new OS designed for devices with low memory and other constraints, such as personal digital assistants. In October 1997, the Justice Department filed a motion in the Federal District Court, stating that Microsoft violated an agreement signed in 1994 and asked the court to stop the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. On January 13, 2000, Bill Gates handed over the CEO position to Steve Ballmer, an old college friend of Gates and employee of the company since 1980, while creating a new position for himself as Chief Software Architect. Various companies including Microsoft formed the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance in October 1999 to (among other things) increase security and protect intellectual property through identifying changes in hardware and software.
Microsoft | 1995–2007: Foray into the Web, Windows 95, Windows XP, and Xbox
Bill Gates (born 1955) is an American business magnate and co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. Bill or William Gates may also refer to:
Bill Gates (disambiguation) | Introduction
MITS hired Allen, and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with him at MITS in November 1975. Allen named their partnership "Micro-Soft", a combination of "microcomputer" and "software", and their first office was in Albuquerque. The first employee Gates and Allen hired was their high school collaborator Ric Weiland. They dropped the hyphen within a year and officially registered the trade name "Microsoft" with the Secretary of the State of New Mexico on November 26, 1976. Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies. Microsoft's Altair BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked out and was being widely copied and distributed.
Bill Gates | BASIC
bgC3 LLC is an American research company established by Microsoft founder, Bill Gates in 2008.
BgC3 | Introduction
In 1979, Bill Gates (1955–) and Paul Allen (1954–2018), founders of Microsoft, moved their small company from New Mexico to the suburbs of their native Seattle. By 1985, sales were over $140 million, by 1990, $1.18 billion, and by 1995, Microsoft was the world's most profitable corporation, Allen and Gates were billionaires, and thousands of their past and present employees were millionaires. Microsoft spawned a host of other companies in the Seattle area: millionaire employees often left to found their own companies, and Allen, after his own departure from Microsoft, became a major investor in new companies. Seattle-area companies that owe their origins at least indirectly to Microsoft include RealNetworks, AttachmateWRQ, InfoSpace, and a host of others.
History of Seattle | High tech: 1970 onwards
Allen and Gates hired Weiland in 1975, the same year they founded Microsoft in Albuquerque. As one of only five employees, Weiland was a lead programmer and developer for the company's BASIC and COBOL language systems. After a couple semesters at Harvard Business School, in 1976–77, he rejoined Microsoft and became the project leader for Microsoft Works. He was described by Allen as a "brilliant programmer" and a key contributor to the company's success.
Ric Weiland | Microsoft
In 1978, Kazuhiko Nishi, a founder of ASCII Publisher, became friends with Bill Gates. In 1979, he founded as the sole dealer of Microsoft's products in Japan. In 1980, ASCII made 1.2 billion yen of sales from licensing Microsoft BASIC. It was 40 percent of Microsoft's sales, and Nishi became Microsoft's Vice President of Sales for Far East. In 1983, ASCII and Microsoft announced MSX. In 1984, ASCII Microsoft was merged to ASCII. However, Microsoft founded its own Japan subsidiary, , and dissolved partnership with ASCII in 1986. It was because Gates wanted Microsoft to go public in the New York Stock Exchange, and also he opposed Nishi and ASCII's diversification.
Microsoft Japan | History
Microsoft continued to make strategic decisions directed at consumers. The company released Microsoft Bob, a graphical user interface designed for novice computer users, in March 1995. The interface was discontinued in 1996 due to poor sales; Bill Gates later attributed its failure to hardware requirements that were too high for typical computers, and is widely regarded as one of Microsoft's most unsuccessful products. DreamWorks SKG and Microsoft formed a new company, DreamWorks Interactive (in 2000 acquired by Electronic Arts which named it EA Los Angeles), to produce interactive and multimedia entertainment properties. On August 24, 1995, Microsoft released Windows 95, a new version of the company's flagship operating system which featured a completely new user interface, including a novel start button; more than a million copies were sold in the first four days after its release.
History of Microsoft | 1995–2007: Foray into the Web, Windows 95, Windows XP, and Xbox
The company was founded in 1968 by David C. Evans and Ivan Sutherland, professors in the Computer Science Department at the University of Utah. who were pioneers in computer graphics technology. They formed the company to produce hardware to run the systems being developed in the University, working from an abandoned barracks on the university grounds. The company was later housed in the University of Utah Research Park. Most of the employees were active or former students, and included Jim Clark, who started Silicon Graphics, Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, John Warnock of Adobe, and Scott P. Hunter of Oracle.
Evans &amp; Sutherland | History
Start-up funds came from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, financier George Soros, and technology entrepreneur Edward W. Scott.
DATA | Introduction
ASCII was founded in 1977 by Kazuhiko Nishi and Keiichiro Tsukamoto. Originally the publisher of a magazine with the same name, "ASCII", talks between Bill Gates and Nishi led to the creation of Microsoft's first overseas sales office, ASCII Microsoft, in 1979. In 1980, ASCII made 1.2 billion yen of sales from licensing Microsoft BASIC. It was 40 percent of Microsoft's sales, and Nishi became Microsoft's Vice President of Sales for Far East. In 1983, ASCII and Microsoft introduced the MSX, a standardized specification for 8-bit home computers. In 1984, ASCII entered the semiconductor business, followed by a further expansion into commercial online service in 1985 under the brand of ASCII-NET.
ASCII Corporation | 1977–1990: Founding and first projects
Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985. In August of the following year, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2. Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, the partnership deteriorated due to mounting creative differences.
Bill Gates | Windows
Following Bill Gates' internal "Internet Tidal Wave memo" on May 26, 1995, Microsoft began to redefine its offerings and expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web. With a few exceptions of new companies, like Netscape, Microsoft was the only major and established company that acted fast enough to be a part of the World Wide Web practically from the start. Other companies like Borland, WordPerfect, Novell, IBM and Lotus, being much slower to adapt to the new situation, would give Microsoft a market dominance. The company released Windows 95 on August 24, 1995, featuring pre-emptive multitasking, a completely new user interface with a novel start button, and 32-bit compatibility; similar to NT, it provided the Win32 API.
Microsoft | 1995–2007: Foray into the Web, Windows 95, Windows XP, and Xbox
In 2015, Microsoft co-founded the Node.js Foundation and joined the R Foundation. The same year, Microsoft also open sourced Matter Center, Microsoft's legal practice management software and also Chakra, the Microsoft Edge JavaScript engine at the time. Microsoft opened the keynote speech at All Things Open in 2015 by stating that:
Microsoft and open source | 2010s
Nishi's relationship with Bill Gates helped ASCII Corporation to grow. MSX, a new personal computer format, was jointly developed by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation for the Japanese market. But Nishi and Gates fell out, the partnership was dissolved in 1986, and Microsoft set up its own Japanese software subsidiary. But ASCII Corporation continued to thrive.
Kazuhiko Nishi | Introduction
He joined Microsoft in 1981 as a product manager. He retired from Microsoft in September 2008, after a transitional period, to join the Gates Foundation. He also held roles managing the company's sales force and services groups.
Jeff Raikes | Introduction
In March 2016, Microsoft launched the Microsoft Ventures venture capital fund. The operation previously known as Microsoft Ventures was renamed Microsoft Accelerator, with a focus on "start-up enablement" instead of startup investments.
M12 (venture capital) | Official founding
McKinsey, founder of McKinsey & Company; Susan Wagner, co-founder of Blackrock; Eric Kriss, co-founder of Bain Capital; Satya Nadella, current CEO of Microsoft; and other current and former CEOs of Fortune 500 companies such as Allstate Insurance, Booz Allen Hamilton, Cargill, Chevron, Credit Suisse, Dominos, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Morgan Stanley, Morningstar, PIMCO, and Reckitt Benckiser.
University of Chicago Booth School of Business | Introduction
The paradigm of freely sharing computer source code—a practice known as open source—traces back to the earliest commercial computers, whose user groups shared code to reduce duplicate work and costs. Following an antitrust suit that forced the unbundling of IBM's hardware and software, a proprietary software industry grew throughout the 1970s, in which companies sought to protect their software products. The technology company Microsoft was founded in this period and has long been an embodiment of the proprietary paradigm and its tension with open source practices, well before the terms "free software" or "open source" were coined. Within a year of founding Microsoft, Bill Gates wrote an open letter that positioned the hobbyist act of copying software as a form of theft.
Microsoft and open source | Initial stance on open source
Microsoft Bob was released in March 1995 (before Windows 95 was released), although it had been widely publicized prior to that date under the codename "Utopia". The project leader for Bob was Karen Fries, a Microsoft researcher. The design was based on research by Professors Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves of Stanford University. Melinda Gates, wife of Bill Gates, was marketing manager for the product. Microsoft originally purchased the domain name bob.com from Boston-area techie Bob Antia, but later traded it to Bob Kerstein for the windows2000.com domain name.
Microsoft Bob | History
Roberts then developed the Altair 8800 personal computer that used the new Intel 8080 microprocessor. This was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of "Popular Electronics", and hobbyists flooded MITS with orders for this $397 computer kit. Bill Gates and Paul Allen joined MITS to develop software and Altair BASIC was Microsoft's first product. Roberts sold MITS in 1977 and retired to Georgia where he farmed, studied medicine and eventually became a small-town doctor living in Cochran, Georgia.
Ed Roberts (computer engineer) | Introduction
Value America was backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures and FedEx co-founder Frederick W. Smith.
Value America | Introduction
Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft (2011) is the "New York Times" bestselling memoir by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. Published in 2011 by Portfolio, a Penguin Group imprint, the book recounts how Allen became enamored with computers at an early age, conceived the idea for Microsoft, recruited his friend Bill Gates to join him, and launched what would become the world's most successful software company. The book, reveals the often conflicted partnership between Allen and Gates, and how — when Allen was recovering from cancer — Gates unsuccessfully conspired to dilute Allen's 36 percent share of Microsoft.
Idea Man | Introduction
Leroy Hood co-founded the Institute with Alan Aderem and Ruedi Aebersold in 2000. However, the story of how ISB got started actually begins in 1990. Lee Hood was the director of a large molecular biotechnology lab at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and was a key advisor in the Human Genome Project, having overseen development of machines that were instrumental to its later success. The University of Washington (UW), like many other universities, was eager to recruit Hood, but had neither the space nor the money to accommodate Hood's large laboratory. Lee Huntsman, director of University of Washington's Center for Bioengineering, was attending a University of Washington football game, sharing a luxury box with Bill Gates, the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft.
Institute for Systems Biology | Early history
Microsoft began developing a graphical user interface (GUI) in 1981. The development of Windows began after Microsoft founder Bill Gates saw a demonstration at COMDEX 1982 of VisiCorp's Visi On, a GUI software suite for IBM PC compatible computers. In 1983 Microsoft learned that Apple's own GUI software—also bit-mapped, and based in part on research from Xerox PARC—was much more advanced; Microsoft decided they needed to differentiate their own offering. In August 1983, Gates recruited Scott McGregor, one of the key developers behind PARC's original windowing system, to be the developer team lead for Windows 1.0 Microsoft first presented Windows to the public on November 10, 1983.
Windows 1.0 | History
In 1981, Microsoft hired Charles Simonyi, the primary developer of Bravo, the first GUI word processor, which was developed at Xerox PARC. Simonyi started work on a word processor called "Multi-Tool Word" and soon hired Richard Brodie, a former Xerox intern, who became the primary software engineer. Microsoft announced Multi-Tool Word for Xenix and MS-DOS in 1983. Its name was soon simplified to "Microsoft Word". Free demonstration copies of the application were bundled with the November 1983 issue of "PC World", making it the first to be distributed on-disk with a magazine. That year Microsoft demonstrated Word running on Windows.
Microsoft Word | Origins
Jeffrey Scott "Jeff" Raikes (born May 29, 1958) is the co-founder of the Raikes Foundation. He retired from his role as the chief executive officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2014. He serves on the boards of Giving Tech Labs, Hudl Costco Wholesale, the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Sciences and Management at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the Microsoft Alumni Network. He is Chair of the Stanford University Board of Trustees. Until early 2008, Raikes was the President of the Microsoft Business Division and oversaw the Information Worker, Server & Tools Business and Microsoft Business Solutions Groups.
Jeff Raikes | Introduction
The company was founded in 2008 and incorporated in 2009 in London by Max Cartellieri and Andrew Heath. They met at Stanford Business School in California, but each founded different companies before founding AlphaSights. Cartellieri co-founded Ciao AG, a leading European price comparison website, backed by Munich-based Venture capital investor Acton Capital Partners and ultimately acquired by Microsoft (MSFT). Heath co-founded GoIndustry, an online marketplace that trades surplus industrial goods all over Europe, now part of GoIndustry DoveBid.
AlphaSights | Founders
Original Software was formed in December 1996 and started trading in May 1997. It was founded by Colin Armitage. In the initial years, Original Software focused on IBM iSeries platform. In 2007 a manual testing solution was introduced.
Original Software | History
David Cannon Evans (February 24, 1924 – October 3, 1998) was the founder of the computer science department at the University of Utah and co-founder (with Ivan Sutherland) of Evans & Sutherland, a pioneering firm in computer graphics hardware.
David C. Evans | Introduction
The first time it was run, it displayed "READY" then Allen typed "PRINT 2+2" and it immediately printed the correct answer: "4". The game "Lunar Lander" was entered in and this worked as well. Gates soon joined Allen and formed Microsoft, then spelled "Micro-Soft".
Altair 8800 | Altair BASIC
1E was founded in 1997 by three former Microsoft contractors, Sumir Karayi, Phil Wilcock, and Mark Blackburn, who each contributed £500 to start the company. Karayi is now CEO, Blackburn is CIO, whilst Wilcock has left the company. The company has more than 26 million licenses deployed worldwide, across 1,700 organizations from public and private sectors in 42 countries. The company's name is derived from a computer error. When some Microsoft Windows computers crash, a blue screen containing "STOP 0x0000001E" appears. This name was chosen because the founders had the ambition that 1E could prevent this from happening to big companies.
1E | History
Billings established the Billings Computer Corporation in 1977, which manufactured one of the first personal computers, called the "Billings Computer". His company acquired the rights from Microsoft to use EBasic, paying Microsoft to help fund development of Fortran and COBOL compiling software. A photograph of Billings and a young Bill Gates was featured in 1982 in "Time Magazine". In 1978, he hired Alan Ashton to develop the Billings Word Processor, an award-winning computer program. Ashton later went on to create WordPerfect in 1981 after the launch of the IBM PC. Billings was also the founder of Caldisk, Inc., which played a role in creating the double-sided floppy disk used in early PCs.
Roger E. Billings | Computer networking
In the Beginning... Was the Command Line is an essay by Neal Stephenson which was originally published online in 1999 and later made available in book form (November 1999, ). The essay is a commentary on why the proprietary operating systems business is unlikely to remain profitable in the future because of competition from free software. It also analyzes the corporate/collective culture of the Microsoft, Apple, and free software communities.
In the Beginning... Was the Command Line | Introduction
Ashton Road was founded in January 2012 by former Microsoft executive Akemi Sagawa, former East West Partners executive Joann Hamick and Hollywood interior designer Carol Kipling.
AshtonRoad.com | Founders
As a consequence Live Labs' original founder and leader Dr. Gary William Flake has resigned from Microsoft.
Microsoft Live Labs | Introduction
In 1999, Gates donated $20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the construction of a computer laboratory named the "William H. Gates Building" that was designed by architect Frank Gehry. While Microsoft had previously given financial support to the institution, this was the first personal donation received from Gates. The Maxwell Dworkin Laboratory of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is named after the mothers of both Gates and Microsoft President Steven A. Ballmer, both of whom were students (Ballmer was a member of the School's graduating class of 1977, while Gates left his studies for Microsoft), and donated funds for the laboratory's construction.
Bill Gates | Personal donations
Ireland became home to one of Microsoft's international production facilities in 1985, and on November 20 Microsoft released its first retail version of Microsoft Windows (Windows 1.0), originally a graphical extension for its MS-DOS operating system. In August, Microsoft and IBM partnered in the development of a different operating system called OS/2. OS/2 was marketed in connection with a new hardware design proprietary to IBM, the PS/2. On February 16, 1986, Microsoft relocated their headquarters to a corporate office campus in Redmond, Washington. Around one month later, on March 13, the company went public with an IPO, raising US$61 million at US$21.00 per share.
History of Microsoft | 1985–1994: Windows and Office
He and his sister, Jody Allen, founded Vulcan Inc. in 1986, a privately held company that managed his various business and philanthropic efforts. He had a multi-billion dollar investment portfolio including technology and media companies, scientific research, real estate holdings, private space flight ventures, and stakes in other sectors. He owned the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League and the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association, and was part-owner of the Seattle Sounders FC of Major League Soccer. In 2000 he resigned from his position on Microsoft's board and assumed the post of senior strategy advisor to the company's management team.
Paul Allen | Introduction
The company was founded under name ″Qazzow″ in 2012 by three University of Washington employees: Jacob O. Wobbrock, a professor and the director of ACE Lab, Amy J. Ko, an associate professor the director of Code & Cognition Lab, and Parmit Chilana, a research assistant and a graduate student at the time, now a professor at Simon Fraser University. Jake Wobbrock assumed the responsibilities of CEO, and Amy J. Ko became the company's CTO. The idea of the key company's service stemmed from Parmit Chilana's dissertation on human–computer interaction. Her research has highlighted a very high proportion (up to 95%) of users' questions that are triggered by something seen on a website and should benefit from contextual help.
AnswerDash | History
The company behind SwiftKey was founded in 2008 by Jon Reynolds, Ben Medlock and Chris Hill-Scott. Its head office is at the Microsoft offices in Paddington, London, and other offices are located in San Francisco, US, and Seoul, South Korea. In September 2013, SwiftKey announced a series B finance round totaling $17.5 million and led by Index Ventures along with Octopus Investments and Accel Partners. In May 2014, SwiftKey hired James Bromley as COO.
Microsoft SwiftKey | History
As the popularity of home video game systems soared in the 1980s, ASCII became active in the development and publishing of software and peripherals for popular consoles such as the Family Computer and Mega Drive. After Microsoft's public stock offering in 1986, Microsoft founded its own Japanese subsidiary, Microsoft Kabushiki Kaisha (MSKK), and dissolved its partnership with ASCII. At around the same time, the company was also obliged to reform itself as a result of its aggressive diversification in the first half of the 1980s. The company went public in 1989.
ASCII Corporation | 1977–1990: Founding and first projects
Bill Gates' "Open Letter to Hobbyists" in 1976 decried computer hobbyists' rampant copyright infringement of software, particularly Microsoft's Altair BASIC interpreter, and reminded his audience that their theft from programmers hindered his ability to produce quality software.
Proprietary software | Origin
Microsoft released Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, as a graphical extension for MS-DOS, despite having begun jointly developing OS/2 with IBM the previous August. Microsoft moved its headquarters from Bellevue to Redmond, Washington on February 26, 1986, and went public on March 13, with the resulting rise in stock making an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. Microsoft released its version of OS/2 to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on April 2, 1987. In 1990, the Federal Trade Commission examined Microsoft for possible collusion due to the partnership with IBM, marking the beginning of more than a decade of legal clashes with the government.
Microsoft | 1985–1994: Windows and Office
FAST was founded in 1997, and the initiation of the company stems from the Department of Computer and Information Science at NTNU. Professor Arne Halaas at NTNU was a substantial contributor in the early days of FAST. John M. Lervik, a student from NTNU, was one of the first employees at FAST. He took his doctorate under the supervision of Professor Tor A. Ramstad and eventually became the company's CEO, until January 2009. During 1998 and 1999, FAST announced strategic alliances with Lycos, Dell and TIBCO, and the first commercial launch of products took place in 1999.
Microsoft Development Center Norway | 1997–1999: Development
It was later reported that the founder, Paul Laudanski, was offered a job with Microsoft. However, the domain name has remained active ever since, albeit with no content, in order to prevent it from being purchased by criminals.
CastleCops | History
On May 22, 1990, Microsoft launched Windows 3.0. The new version of Microsoft's operating system boasted new features such as streamlined graphic user interface GUI and improved protected mode ability for the Intel 386 processor; it sold over 100,000 copies in two weeks. Windows at the time generated more revenue for Microsoft than OS/2, and the company decided to move more resources from OS/2 to Windows. In an internal memo to Microsoft employees on May 16, 1991, Bill Gates announced that the OS/2 partnership was over, and that Microsoft would henceforth focus its platform efforts on Windows and the Windows NT kernel.
History of Microsoft | 1985–1994: Windows and Office
IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft in November 1980 to provide a version of the CP/M OS to be used in the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products which it branded as MS-DOS, although IBM rebranded it to IBM PC DOS. Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981. IBM had copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, so other companies had to reverse engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles, but no such restriction applied to the operating systems.
Microsoft | 1972–1985: Founding
!Company !Type !Stock !Category !Year founded !Total founders !Founder/co-founder from MIT |Alexa Internet |Apollo Computer |Art Technology Group |Avid |BlackRock |Blackstone Group |Cambridge Innovation Center |Cambridge SoundWorks |Coatue Management |Computervision |Constant Contact |E Ink |E*Trade |Electronic Frontier Foundation |Encore Computer |Frame Technology Corp. |Free Software Foundation |Harmonix |Infoseek |Inktomi |Internet Archive |iRobot |ITA Software |Kurzweil Music Systems |Kurzweil Educational Systems |Lam Research |Lotus Development Corporation
List of companies founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni | 1980–1999
The screen-saver and wallpaper files include images from the Codex Leicester, which Microsoft co-founder, then CEO Bill Gates bought in 1994.
Microsoft Plus! | Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95
This is a history of Microsoft Office and its versions. This table only includes final releases and not pre-release or beta software.
History of Microsoft Office | Introduction
The first version of Microsoft Word was developed by Charles Simonyi and Richard Brodie, former Xerox programmers hired by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1981. Both programmers worked on Xerox Bravo, the first WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processor. The first Word version, Word 1.0, was released in October 1983 for Xenix and MS-DOS; it was followed by four very similar versions that were not very successful. The first Windows version was released in 1989, with a slightly improved interface. When Windows 3.0 was released in 1990, Word became a huge commercial success. Word for Windows 1.0 was followed by Word 2.0 in 1991 and Word 6.0 in 1993.
History of Microsoft Word | Introduction
Barbarians Led by Bill Gates: Microsoft from the Inside is a book that was jointly written by Jennifer Edstrom and Marlin Eller, an American programmer who was a manager and a software developer at Microsoft Corporation from 1982–95, and development lead for the Graphics Device Interface (GDI) of Windows 1.0 and also for Pen Windows. Written as a third-person account of Eller's experiences at Microsoft, it goes into detail about the early years of Microsoft and its emergence as a massive corporation. Two chapters of the book deal specifically with the business contacts between Microsoft and GO Corporation. In April 2008, as part of a larger federal court case, the gesture features of the Windows/Tablet PC operating system and hardware were found to infringe on a patent by GO Corp.
Barbarians Led by Bill Gates | Introduction
In 2011, Allen's memoir, "", was published by Portfolio, a Penguin Group imprint. The book recounts how Allen became enamored with computers at an early age, conceived the idea for Microsoft, recruited his friend Bill Gates to join him, and launched what would become the world's most successful software company. It also explores Allen's business and creative ventures following his 1983 departure from Microsoft, including his involvement in SpaceShipOne, his purchase of the Portland Trail Blazers and Seattle Seahawks, his passion for music, and his ongoing support for scientific research. The book made "The New York Times Best Seller list" and the paperback version, which included a new epilogue, came out on October 30, 2012.
Paul Allen | "Idea Man"
By 1985, sales were over $140 million, by 1990, $1.18 billion, and by 1995, Microsoft was the world's most profitable corporation, Allen and Gates were billionaires, and literally thousands of their past and present employees were millionaires. Microsoft had grown from a two-man operation to a company with 11,000 employees in 1992 and 48,030 (about half of them in the Seattle area) in 2001. Microsoft spawned a host of other companies in the Seattle area: millionaire employees often left to found their own companies, and Allen, after his own departure from Microsoft, became a major investor in new companies. Seattle-area companies that owe their origins at least indirectly to Microsoft include RealNetworks, Attachmate, InfoSpace, and a host of others.
History of Seattle since 1940 | Silicon Forest: 1985–present
Bill Gates launched Microsoft's "Trustworthy Computing" initiative with a January 15, 2002 memo, referencing an internal whitepaper by Microsoft CTO and Senior Vice President Craig Mundie. The move was reportedly prompted by the fact that they ""...had been under fire from some of its larger customers–government agencies, financial companies and others–about the security problems in Windows, issues that were being brought front and center by a series of self-replicating worms and embarrassing attacks."" such as Code Red, Nimda and Klez. Four areas were identified as the initiative's key areas: Security, Privacy, Reliability, and Business Integrity, and despite some initial scepticism, at its 10-year anniversary it was generally accepted as having ""...made a positive impact on the industry...""..
Trustworthy computing | Microsoft and Trustworthy Computing
The relationship between Allen and Gates became strained as they argued even over small things. Allen effectively left Microsoft in 1982 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, though he remained on the board of directors as vice chairman. Gates reportedly asked Allen to give him some of his shares to compensate for the higher amount of work that Gates was doing. According to Allen, Gates said that he "did almost everything on BASIC" and the company should be split 60–40 in his favor. Allen agreed to this arrangement, which Gates later renegotiated to 64–36. In 1983, Gates tried to buy Allen out at $5 per share, but Allen refused and left the company with his shares intact; this made him a billionaire when Microsoft went public.
Paul Allen | Microsoft
By the end of the trading day, the price had risen to US$28.00. In 1987, Microsoft eventually released their first version of OS/2 to OEMs. By then the company was the world's largest producer of software for personal computers—ahead of former leader Lotus Development—and published the three most-popular Macintosh business applications. That year the company purchased Forethought, the developer of PowerPoint and Microsoft's first major software acquisition on the 30th July 1987. Meanwhile, Microsoft began introducing its most prominent office products. Microsoft Works, an integrated office program which combined features typically found in a word processor, spreadsheet, database and other office applications, saw its first release as an application for the Apple Macintosh towards the end of 1986.
History of Microsoft | 1985–1994: Windows and Office
COSBI is a joint venture between Microsoft Research and the University of Trento. The founding agreement was signed in Prague on February 2, 2005 by the Minister of Education, University and Research (Minister Letizia Moratti), the Minister of Innovation and Technology (Minister Lucio Stanca), the Province of Trento (Gianluca Salvatori, Councillor of Planning, Research, and Innovation), the University of Trento (Davide Bassi, Rector), the Microsoft Corporation (Bill Gates, president and founder). COSBI was inaugurated on December 7, 2005.
COSBI | Origin
Intel Corporation was founded on July 18, 1968 by semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore (of Moore's law), and is associated with the executive leadership and vision of Andrew Grove. The company's name was conceived as portmanteau of the words "int"egrated and "el"ectronics, with co-founder Noyce having been a key inventor of the integrated circuit (the microchip). The fact that "intel" is the term for intelligence information also made the name appropriate. Intel was an early developer of SRAM and DRAM memory chips, which represented the majority of its business until 1981. Although Intel created the world's first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971, it was not until the success of the personal computer (PC) that this became its primary business.
Intel | Introduction
The company was built on the early work of Prewitt using his business and personal computer development experiences. This was the period during the creation of the first microcomputers, the launch of the Altair 8800 and founding of Microsoft. He was selling and programming Minicomputers and assembling these microcomputers, attaching computer peripherals, programming and building them into business computer systems. Core was created under a different business model. Initially, it was marketed as an association and structured as a for-profit organization specifically for users of the IBM 5100 Series and IBM System/23. The objective was to sell by mail-order computer supplies, pre-developed (off-the-shelf) programs and hardware maintenance service.
Core International | 1975–1980: Founding
Computer.com was a short-lived dot-com company founded in 1999. After spending half of its $7 million in venture capital on ads during Super Bowl XXXIV, it was sold to Office Depot in 2000. It is significant as a case study for business historians and others interested in the dot-com bubble.
Computer.com | Introduction
"The Elements of Influence" was written by Alan D. Kelly, who started, ran and sold Applied Communications, a high-tech Silicon Valley PR and communications research firm from 1992 to 2003. To put a precise date on the text's genesis would be September 5, 1995. At a Paris technology conference, the software mogul and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, an Applied Communications’ client, declared in a keynote address directly preceding his rival Bill Gates, then Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, that “the PC is a ridiculous device.” It was from this that Kelly derived one of the first plays, the "Call Out".”
The Elements of Influence | Origins
BASIC popularity skyrocketed in 1975 after a pair of youngsters in a Harvard dormitory, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, created a version of BASIC that was viable on one of the earliest personal computers. Gates and Allen’s version became the most prominent iterations of BASIC.
Thomas E. Kurtz | BASIC
Microsoft Research was founded in 1991. A longtime "Microsoft Researcher," Peter Lee became the organization's head in 2013. In 2014, the organization had 1,100 advanced researchers "working in 55 areas of study in a dozen labs worldwide." From 2015 to 2020, Lee was the head of Microsoft Research NeXT (for New Experiences and Technologies) and Microsoft Healthcare. Since 2020 he leads the combined MSR Labs, AI, NeXT, Healthcare, and other incubation efforts.
Peter Lee (computer scientist) | Career
was founded and incorporated in 2007.
Why U | History
Some people, especially developers who had ignored Windows and committed most of their resources to OS/2, were taken by surprise, and accused Microsoft of deception. This changeover from OS/2 was frequently referred to in the industry as "the head-fake". In the recent years, the popularity of OS/2 declined, and Windows quickly became the favored PC platform. 1991 also marked the founding of Microsoft Research, an organization in Microsoft for researching computer science subjects, and Microsoft Visual Basic, a popular development product for companies and individuals.
History of Microsoft | 1985–1994: Windows and Office
Founder.org was founded in 2012 by the CEO & Founder of Splunk, Michael Baum. It opened applications for the Class of 2014 in January 2013, and accepted its first ten companies in June 2013. The second Class of 2015 was increased in size to 50 companies and was accepted in June 2014.
Founder.org | History
Ballmer led Microsoft's development of the .NET Framework. Ballmer was then promoted to President of Microsoft, a title that he held from July 1998 to February 2001, making him the de facto number two in the company to the chairman and CEO, Bill Gates.
Steve Ballmer | History with Microsoft
Gates later repaired his relationship with Allen, and the two men donated $2.2 million to their childhood school Lakeside in 1986. They remained friends for the rest of Allen's life.
Paul Allen | Microsoft
, who was also a member of ASCII, officially became the first president of Microsoft Kabushiki Kaisha. ASCII kept rights of MSX. In October 1986, MSKK announced the AX project that was a Japanese computing initiative to allow IBM PCs to handle Japanese text. The AX couldn't break into the Japanese PC market due to its cost and less available software.
Microsoft Japan | History
Microsoft is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. Microsoft would also come to dominate the office suite market with Microsoft Office. The company has diversified in recent years into the video game industry with the Xbox, the Xbox 360, the Xbox One, and the Xbox Series X as well as into the consumer electronics and digital services market with Zune, MSN and the Windows Phone OS.
List of mergers and acquisitions by Microsoft | Introduction
William Henry Gates II (November 30, 1925September 14, 2020), better known as Bill Gates Sr., was an American attorney, philanthropist, and civic leader. He was the founder of the law firm Shidler McBroom & Gates (a predecessor of K&L Gates), and also served as president of both the Seattle King County and Washington State Bar associations. He was the father of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Bill Gates Sr. | Introduction
Nordeus was founded in March 2010 by former Microsoft employees, who are all alumni of the University of Belgrade Faculty of Electrical Engineering. As of 2019, Nordeus has 250 employees.
Nordeus | History
In February 1976, he wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter in which he asserted that more than 90% of the users of Microsoft Altair BASIC had not paid Microsoft for it and the Altair "hobby market" was in danger of eliminating the incentive for any professional developers to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software. This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to demand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continued to develop programming language software for various systems.
Bill Gates | BASIC
Edward P. ("Skip") Stritter, engineer and entrepreneur, was the chief architect of the Motorola 68000 microprocessor (used in the original Apple Computer Macintosh), a co-founder of the first commercial RISC company MIPS Computer Systems, the founder of Clarity Wireless, (acquired by Cisco Systems for $157 million) and founder of NeTPower. He also served on the Board of Overseers of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. He was nominated by the United States Justice Department to serve on a three-member technical board of overseers to ensure that Microsoft complied with the judgements of "United States v. Microsoft". He received his bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College in 1968 and his master's degree (1969) and PhD (1976) from Stanford University.
Edward P. Stritter | Introduction
MSRA was also the foundation for Microsoft Advanced Technology Center and Asia-Pacific R&D group, the largest R&D center for Microsoft outside of the US. In 2011, Zhang founded the Microsoft venture Accelerator in Beijing, and has become one of the most vibrant start-up engines in China with over 200 companies incubated over the years.
Ya-Qin Zhang | Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft also released the Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro joystick in an attempt to further expand its profile in the computer hardware market. On May 26, 1995, Bill Gates sent the "Internet Tidal Wave" memorandum to Microsoft executives. The memo described Netscape with their Netscape Navigator as a "new competitor 'born' on the Internet". The memo outlines Microsoft's failure to grasp the Internet's importance, and in it Gates assigned "the Internet the highest level of importance" from then on. Microsoft began to expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web. On August 24, 1995, it launched a major online service, MSN (Microsoft Network), as a direct competitor to AOL.
History of Microsoft | 1995–2007: Foray into the Web, Windows 95, Windows XP, and Xbox
MessageCast was started by two co-founders, Royal Farros and Dave Hodson in 2002. The company was acquired by Microsoft in May, 2005.
MessageCast | History