science

History of Microsoft

History of Microsoft is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand History of Microsoft rather than just read about it. In short: Microsoft is a computer technology corporation founded on April 4, 1975, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. It is best known for the Windows operating system, the Office productivity software suite, the Microsoft 365 subscription service, the Xbox video gaming brand, the Bing search engine, and the Azure cloud computing platform.

Key takeaways

History of Microsoft belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect History of Microsoft to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of History of Microsoft from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Microsoft is a computer technology corporation founded on April 4, 1975, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. It is best known for the Windows operating system, the Office productivity software suite, the Microsoft 365 subscription service, the Xbox video gaming brand, the Bing search engine, and the Azure cloud computing 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. Microsoft produced that operating system, but also continued to sell their own alternative, which proved to be in direct competition with OS/2. Windows eventually overshadowed OS/2 in terms of sales. When Microsoft launched several Windows versions in the 1990s, they had captured over 90% market share of the world's personal computers. As of June 30, 2015, Microsoft has a global annual revenue of US$86.83 billion (~$112 billion in 2024) and 128,076 employees worldwide. It develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices.

1975–1985: 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. 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 "Microsoft" name with the Secretary of State of New Mexico. The first employee Gates and Allen hired was their high school collaborator Ric Weiland. 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. 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, 11 of the then-13 employees posed for the staff photo on the right. Steve Ballmer joined the company on June 11, 1980, and would later succeed Bill Gates as CEO from January 2000 until February 2014. The company restructured on June 25, 1981, to become an incorporated business in its home state of Washington (with a further change of its name to "Microsoft Corporation, Inc."). As part of the restructuring, Bill Gates became president of the company and chairman of the board, and Paul Allen became executive vice president and vice chairman. In 1983, Allen left the company after receiving a Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis, though he remained on the board as vice-chairman. This effectively ended the formal business partnership between Gates and Allen, which had been strained months prior due to a contentious dispute over Microsoft equity. Later in the decade, Gates and Allen repaired their relationship and together the two donated millions to their childhood school Lakeside. They remained friends until Allen's death in October 2018. Microsoft's early products were different variants of Microsoft BASIC which was the dominant programming language in late 1970s and early 1980s home computers such as Apple II (Applesoft BASIC) and Commodore 64 (Commodore BASIC), and were also provided with early versions of the IBM PC as the IBM Cassette BASIC. Microsoft also marketed through an Apple dealer in West Palm Beach, Florida two products for the Radio-Shack TRS-80. One was "Typing Tutor" which led the user through learning to use a keyboard. The other was authored by a professor at the University of Hawaii called "MuMATH" and had the ability to do mathematics in long integer math to avoid floating point numbers.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with History of Microsoft

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what History of Microsoft claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to History of Microsoft before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about History of Microsoft ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of History of Microsoft

In research: History of Microsoft appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses History of Microsoft in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: History of Microsoft is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Business duos, History of Microsoft, History of the Internet, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for History of Microsoft outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study History of Microsoft in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what History of Microsoft means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain History of Microsoft out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is History of Microsoft in simple terms?

Why does History of Microsoft matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study History of Microsoft?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on History of Microsoft.