Microsoft celebrates its 40th anniversary

^{Photography: Microsoft}

In early 1975, Ed Roberts, the head of MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), signed a contract with two young men named Bill Gates and Paul Allen to supply the Basic language interpreter for the Altaire 8080 computer. Roberts once paid $ 3000 to both interpreter creators for his exclusive right sales, and also pledged to pay deductions from each copy sold - from 30 to 75 dollars. In order to conduct business in a more organized manner, Gates and Allen decided to establish Allen & Gates Inc, but found this name more appropriate for a law firm. As a result, they settled on the “Micro-soft” variant, derived from the words microprocessors and software , which Paul Allen suggested. On April 4, 1975, the company was registered in Albuquerque.

Bill Gates became the CEO of the new company with a share of 64% (sometimes called a more round figure of 60%). Since until 1976 Paul Allen was still working at MITS and was less involved in creating the interpreter, his share was 36%. The first employee of Micro-soft was Monte Davidoff , who created the math library for Altair Basic. The interpreter’s credits included a line indicating the roles of each of the creators:

Paul Allen wrote helper codes. Bill Gates wrote executable codes. Monte Davidoff wrote a math library

By the end of 1975, Micro-soft managed to earn $ 16,000. Gates decided not to limit his company to cooperation with MITS and signed contracts for developing the Basic interpreter with other companies, such as General Electric. On November 26, 1976, the hyphen from the company's name disappeared, and it has now received the world-famous name Microsoft.

Today, Bill Gates sent an e-mail to all employees of the company, including the former, in which he congratulated them on their significant anniversary and involvement in the history of the development of the whole industry that turned the world around. Many technical publications, including TheVerge, noticed a tweet with a screenshot of the letter:
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Bill Gates Mail to Microsoft 40th Anniversary #microsoft pic.twitter.com/Rwh95Mov64

- Amit Roy Choudhary (@roychoudhary) April 3, 2015

Gates writes:

We have done a lot together over these 40 years and have given impetus to countless companies and people to develop their potential. But now the most important thing is what we will do next. Thank you for helping Microsoft make it better now and for many decades to come.