Ann: Appendix 4C, page-12

2b2f - look below: I have highlighted a few things that I found interesting - again not comparing the companies just showing that even the best started somewhere.



In 1972 they established their first company, Traf-O-Data, which sold a rudimentary computer that recorded and analyzed traffic data. Allen went on to study computer science at the University of Washington and then dropped out to work at Honeywell, while Gates enrolled at Harvard. Inspired in 1975 by an issue of Popular Electronics that showed the new Altair microcomputer kit just released by MITS Computer, Gates and Allen wrote a version of BASIC for the machine. Later that year Gates left college to work full time developing programming languages for the Altair, and he and Allen relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to be near MITS Computer, where Allen took a position as director of software development. Gates and Allen named their partnership Micro-soft. Their revenues for 1975 totaled $16,000.
A year later, Gates published "An Open Letter to Hobbyists" in the Altair newsletter, in which he enjoined users to avoid illegally copied software. Arguing that software piracy prevented "good software from being written," Gates wrote prophetically, "Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software." In November 1976 Allen left MITS to devote his full attention to Microsoft, and the company's tradename was registered. In 1977 Apple and Radio Shack licensed Microsoft BASIC for their Apple II and Tandy computers, with the Apple license going for a flat fee of $21,000. As Apple sold a million machines complete with BASIC, Microsoft's unit revenues dropped to two cents a copy.