At MicrosoftCelebrating the 50th anniversaryOn this occasion, Microsoft founder Bill Gates announced through his "Gates Notes" website that he would publicly share the foundation stone of Microsoft's founding.Altair Basic original code.
Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. It currently ranks among the top five technology giants in the United States, alongside Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta. Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, its current business covers research and development, manufacturing, licensing, and provision of a wide range of software and cloud services. It is well-known for its Windows operating system, Office software, Azure cloud services, and Xbox gaming business.
In the early days of Microsoft's development, it mainly provided BASIC program compiler software for the Altair 1974 computer device built by MITS in 8080 with the Intel 8800 processor. In the mid-1980s, it established its market position in the home PC operating system market with MS-DOS, and later dominated the home PC operating system market with Windows software, which mainly focuses on graphics operations.
With the rise of the Internet, Microsoft also began to expand the development of its IE browser and Internet services such as MSN. It also began to invest in the hardware market, entering the gaming market with Xbox, the music market with Zune, and even challenging the television market through MSN TV. However, in the end, only the Xbox business performed well. Even though Microsoft later created PC products designed by Surface, their overall market usage rate was not high.
Bill Gates announced the release of the original code for Altair Basic to celebrate Microsoft's 50th anniversary. 157 pages of the original code were made public in PDF format. An unofficial version of Micro-Soft Altair BASIC 3.2 was also released on GitHub to illustrate the foundation of Microsoft's founding.
