A Very Trippy Look at Microsoft’s Beginnings

It’s not often you’ll see us singing the praises of Microsoft on these pages, but credit where credit is due, this first-person account of how the software giant got its foot in the proverbial door by Bill Gates himself is pretty slick.

Now it’s not the story that has us excited, mind you. It’s the website itself. As you scroll down the page, the text and images morph around in a very pleasing and retro-inspired way. Running your cursor over the text makes it flip through random ASCII characters, reminding us a bit of the “decryption” effect from Sneakers. Even the static images have dithering applied to them as if they’re being rendered on some ancient piece of hardware. We don’t know who’s doing Billy’s web design, but we’d love to have them come refresh our Retro Edition.

Presentation aside, for those who don’t know the story: back in 1975, Gates and Paul Allen told the manufacturer of the Altair 8800 that they had a version of BASIC that would run on the computer and make it easier for people to use. Seeing the potential for increased sales, the company was very interested, and asked them to come give a demonstration of the software in a few weeks.

There was just one problem — Bill and Paul lied. They had never even seen an Altair in person, let alone wrote any code for one. So they set off on a mad dash to complete the project in time, with Allen famously still working on the code on the plane as they flew to the meeting. As you’ve probably guessed, they ended up pulling it off, and the rest is history.

At the very end of the page, you can download the actual source code for Altair BASIC that Gates and Allen co-delivered, presented as scans of the original printout. A little light reading as you wait to find out if that latest Windows update that’s installing is going to tell you that your machine is too old to use anymore.