Eager to join that revolution, Gates and Allen called Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems — the makers of the Altair — to pitch a beginner friendly programming language called Beginner ...

The article inspired Gates, who was just a freshman at Harvard University, and Allen to call Altair’s maker, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, and promise the company’s CEO Ed Roberts they ...

At the end of his post, he included a PDF of the original source code for the Altair Basic — all 157 pages of it. You can check it out here.

Eventually, they successfully created Altair BASIC. Once they presented it to Ed Roberts, MITS agreed to license the software, marking the first official product of Microsoft (then called Micro-Soft).

Bill Gates is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Microsoft by sharing the Altair Basic source code that created the very foundation of the company.

The company helped launch the software industry and bring a computer to every desktop. Hit products like Windows and the Xbox became household names – but does anyone remember the Zune?

The Altair BASIC source code is available as a PDF download, covering 157 pages. Gates is “super proud of how it turned out,” and considering what Altair BASIC led to, he should be.

In the lead up to Microsoft's 50th anniversary, Bill Gates published the source code that ultimately led to the company's success.

Microsoft is celebrating its 50th birthday these days, and it all started with the Altair Basic program. Bill Gates has now published its source code.

Altair BASIC became the first product of our new company, which we decided to call Micro-Soft." The source code is provided as a 157-page PDF of scanned fan-fold paper rather than as source in a ...