1955 William Henry Gates III arrives on planet earth.

1968 Attends a private school that has a GE time sharing system

Also has access to Computer Center Corp PDP-10 in Seattle

1975 Law student at Harvard

Gates and Paul Allen see the Altair article in Popular Electronics

Decide to put Basic on Altair

Basic is developed for time sharing mainframes

Developed at Dartmouth (beginning in 1963) under the leadership of John G. Kemeny, chairman of math department, later president of Dartmouth

Developers weren't enthusiastic about squeezing it onto smaller machines.

Gates and Monte Davidoff write 8080 Basic on Harvard's PDP-10  (2, 235)

Paul Allen demos Basic to Roberts and Yates at MITS

MITS announces Basic for Altair

A newletter announces a 4K memory version of Basic with larger versions to follow

4K version for $60
8K version for $75
"extended" version $150 (for disk and other mass storage)

Lots of features

Good performance

PEEK, POKE for direct access to memory
- follows DEC's footsteps
- makes no sense for a time sharing system

According to Gates....

He never was an employee of MITS

(However, Paul Allen was until 1976)

Under the name "Micro Soft" (later "Micro-Soft"), he and Allen retain right to their BASIC.

In a 1976 "Open Letter to Hobbyists" (3), Gates complains about people making illicit copies of his BASIC by duplicating the paper tape.  (2, 235)

1978 "Microsoft" severs its relationship with MITS

Moves to Seattle suburb of Bellvue

1. Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray. Computer: A History of the Information Machine (Basic Books, 1996).

2. Paul E. Ceruzzi. A History of Modern Computing (MIT Press, 2000).

3. Bill Gates, "An Open Letter to Hobbyists," Computer Notes (MITS Corporation, 1976 Feb). Also available online at http://www.fortunecity.com/marina/reach/435/openltr.html (www.fortunecity.com, accessed 2004 Nov 12).