Altair Cover Sets Stage for Microsoft's Humble Beginnings
When Bill Gates and Paul Allen saw the Altair 8800 on the cover of Popular Electronics in January 1975, it sparked a practical question for them. The machine was a kit that buyers had to assemble themselves, with no keyboard or screen and only 256 bytes of memory. But if people were going to buy their own computers, they would need software to make them useful.
Gates and Allen didn't have an Altair, but they contacted MITS, the company behind it, claiming to have a version of BASIC that could run on the machine. They hadn't written it yet, so they built an Altair simulator using a computer at Harvard. Gates worked with Monte Davidoff, while Allen wrote the simulator.
The programme worked when they demonstrated it to MITS in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The company agreed to distribute it as Altair BASIC and paid them $3,000 upfront, plus royalties based on copies sold.