The ubiquitous maker of Windows and Office has been around since the Ford Administration.
Russia was still the Soviet Union in 1975, and possessed enough nuclear firepower to wipe out life on the planet. Thirty years later, the Soviet Union has been a memory for several years, and the worst attacks come from criminal hackers and phishing scammers working out of .ru domains.
Microsoft came into being in 1975, and at its company meeting at Safeco Field on Friday, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear Sinatra singing “It Was A Very Good Year” over the stadium loudspeakers. In the computing world, Bill Gates and Paul Allen were putting together the first Disk Operating System, or DOS.
Personal computers were a build-your-own prospect, if one wanted to pick up an Altair 8800 by mail order and assemble it. Two thousand people bought it for $400, and think about this: Solitaire and Minesweeper wouldn’t even exist until 1981.
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer both offered comments on the thirty year history of the company via a statement this week:
“As I think about the last 30 years,” said Mr. Gates, “I’m most proud of our making ‘big bets’ on technologies like the graphical user interface or Web services and watching them grow into something people rely on every day.”
Steve Ballmer said: “With our 30-year heritage of delivering low-cost, high-volume innovations, we’re in a great position to provide people and organizations with the software and services they need to achieve their potential.”
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
