"Before Office, Windows, Xbox", Bill Gates shares original Microsoft code on its 50th year

Last week, Microsoft announced that it would be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the company. Company co-founder Bill Gates celebrated it in a memorable way by releasing the original source code for Altair BASIC, the software that laid the foundation for Microsoft’s formation. Gates shared the original source code, a 157-page document written in Intel 8080 assembly language.

Gates, in an emotionally reflective blog post that starts with "Before there was Office or Windows 95 or Xbox or AI, there was Altair BASIC", described the code as “the coolest” he has ever written.

The story of Altair BASIC began in 1975 when Gates, then a Harvard freshman, and his friend Paul Allen were inspired by an article in Popular Electronics magazine about the Altair 8800, a computer powered by Intel’s 8080 chip.

Personal computing was nowhere near as big back then, but the duo recognized the potential and decided to contact the Altair’s manufacturer, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), and proposed software that would enable users to control the hardware.

After over two months of development, Bill Gates and Paul Allen created Altair BASIC using the BASIC programming language developed at Dartmouth College in 1964.

Thus, Altair BASIC became Microsoft’s first product, initially licensed to MITS (As a fun trivia, back then Microsoft was actually "Micro-Soft."). The software’s success showed Microsoft the way forward, towards profit and growth, as well as technological innovation, and this led to the development of iconic products like Windows, Office, and more, something which our Neowin readers and countless other folks rely on daily.

Reflecting on Microsoft’s five-decade-long journey, Gates also acknowledged the contributions of the leaders that came after him, the likes of Steve Ballmer and Satya Nadella, as well as the many employees who shaped the company over five decades.

You can view the blog post here on Bill Gates' The Gates Notes website.

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