The First 100 Years of Microsoft: How Windows, Office, and the Internet Apparel Became the First PCs in the United States

“The company’s ability to reinvent itself is remarkable, and that’s pretty unusual,” Lazowska said. “Many companies just keep riding the same horse and don’t change — and eventually fade away.”

Microsoft will be focused on building an artificial intelligence transformation within the next 50 years. It could be the catalyst to transform Windows, Office, Azure and practically every other business that Microsoft has built over the decades.

Today, the company is reinventing itself yet again. Microsoft Azure, its cloud computing platform, has been a big revenue driver. The company uses its vast network of data centers to sell technology services to other businesses, many of which are adopting artificial intelligence applications and need cloud computing to run them.

Founded on April 4th, 1975, Microsoft went on to strike a deal with IBM to provide software for its first PC in 1980. This became the foundation of MS-DOS, which dominated IBM-compatible PCs during the ’80s. Windows started out as a product of Microsoft’s early success and eventually led to a dream of a PC on every desk and in every home.

Microsoft was a software company, but by the early 2000s, its top rivals were scoring big wins in hardware. Apple created its devices in-house to give it more control and to make it easier to use. The iPod and the Apple iPhone were the best in mobile technology.

We still use Word, PowerPoint, and excel, even though they were introduced in that system. The idea that applications could be used across industries and parts of society was something new.

For University of Washington tech historian and author Margaret O’Mara, two things come to mind when she thinks back on Microsoft’s greatest hits: “ I immediately think of Windows and Office,” she said. I remember when the system was running on almost every single desktop computer in the world by the end of the 1990s.

Users could navigate by pointing at and clicking on colorful icons instead of typing commands. Microsoft didn’t invent the graphic operating system, but it did make it cheaper and more widely available — and that really helped personal computers take off.

Ordinary people were learning to type those commands, as a result of the advent of the PC. If they did not work for a research university, they might come across a PC in their school or office.

Michael Brutman installed it on the early PC at the Seattle vintage computer festival. He said that the environment of the DOS was very minimal. Really minimal. A black screen where you type in commands on is what he had on display.

The Gates Allen Experience: From MITS to MS-DOS, Microsoft Comes to the Home, and the Pervasiveness of Digital Technology

Gates and Allen laid the foundation for the development of digital technology that has become part of our daily lives by putting a computer on every desk and in every home. They called their company Microsoft, and it led the personal computing revolution.

They took so many liberties with the lab’s equipment that in 1971 the director sent Allen a letter requiring him to turn in his key. Allen had read that letter aloud to a crowd at the dedication of the new computer science school in his name.

A company called MITS sold the computer as a kit. An Altair was about the size of an apple crate, with no screen, just lights and switches on the front. You’d program it by punching holes into paper.

Ed Lazowska, a computer science professor at the Allen School at the University of Washington, said that Allen ran up to Bill and told him they had to catch the train. “The rest is history.”

Together, they built something called an “interpreter,” which would tell the computer how to execute commands from the user. The program could be licensed and sold with the kits by MITS. The MITS said yes. They were doing business.

Micro-Soft was founded by friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Gates and Allen started Microsoft because they wanted to develop software for the early personal computer, the Altair 8800.

In a shrewd business move, Gates and Allen made sure they could license MS-DOS to any computer manufacturer, not just IBM. That non-exclusivity deal helped Microsoft software take over the world.

The new industry faced a limitation in the 1970s, that was a small pool of customers. Computers mainly belonged to kit hobbyists — the early adopters who Gates was trying to persuade to become paying customers — or to the academic and business institutions that could afford much more powerful room-sized mainframes.

When Microsoft was founded, digital technology was in universities and major companies that were locked in large air conditioned rooms.

“Digital technology is absolutely everywhere and that’s the change,” said Lazowska. He says that computing has become so ubiquitous that we barely think about it. “In many ways, it’s the vision of Bill and Paul that drove that transformation,” he said.

IBM’s first home computers came with Microsoft’s next big innovation installed, so most people knew about it. The Microsoft Disk Operating System was referred to as ‘MS-DOS’.

Microsoft is celebrating its 50 years in business during a special event at its headquarters in Washington. We are expecting to see familiar faces from the past and present of Microsoft when they unveil new Copilot features.

Microsoft has also experimented with a variety of hardware over the years, but its most successful device lineup has come in the form of Surface, which originally launched in 2012 alongside Windows 8. Microsoft has been trying to demonstrate the best of their products on the PC, and it is soon going to be a testing ground for their ambitions.