preview

History of Microsoft Essay example

Decent Essays

History of Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation, leading American computer software company. Microsoft develops and sells a wide variety of computer software products in more than fifty countries. Microsoft's Windows operating systems for personal computers are the most widely use operating systems in the world. Microsoft had revenues of $14.4 billion for the fiscal year ending June 1998, and employs more than 27,000 people in 60 countries. Microsoft has it's headquaters in Redmond Washington. Microsoft's other well known products include, Word, a word processor; Excel, a spreadsheet program; Access, a database program; and PowerPoint, a program used …show more content…

In 1975 Popular Electronics magazine featured a cover story about the Altiar 8800, the first personal computer. The article inspired Gates and Allen to develop the first version of the BASIC programming language for the Altiar. They licensed the software to Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the Altiar's manufacturer, and formed Microsoft (originally Micro-soft) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to develop versions of BASIC for other computer companies. Microsoft's early customers included fledgling hardware firms such as Apple Computer, maker of the Apple II computer; Commodore, maker of the PET computer; and Tandy Corporation; maker of the Radio Shack TRS-80 computer. In 1977 Microsoft shipped it's second language product, Microsoft FORTRAN, and it soon released versions of BASIC for the 8080 and the 8086 microprocessors. In 1979 Gates and Allen moved the company to Bellevue, Washington, a suburb of their hometown Seattle. ( Microsoft moved to it's current headquaters in Redmond in 1986.) In 1980 International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) chose Microsoft to write the operating system for the IBM PC personal computer, to be introduced the following year. Under time and pressure, Microsoft purchased QDOS (Quick and Dirty

Get Access