Finding:

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   Altair BASIC

   In preparation for the demo, they stored the finished interpreter on a punched tape that the Altair could read and Paul Allen flew to Albuquerque. ... Altair BASIC listing title page
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   Altair 8800

   Today the Altair is widely recognized as the spark that led to the personal computer revolution of the next few years: The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a de facto standard in form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC. ... In fact the letter had been sent by Bill Gates and Paul Allen from the Boston area, and they had no BASIC yet to offer.
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   Bill Gates

   In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. ... The demonstration, held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC.
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   Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

   Among them are: John Draper (also known as Captain Crunch), infamous phone phreaker; Bill Gates, Harvard dropout and “cocky wizard” who wrote Altair BASIC; Richard Greenblatt, the “hacker's hacker”; Steve Jobs, visionary; Marvin Minsky, “playful and brilliant" MIT professor who headed the MIT AI Lab; Richard Stallman, The Last of the True Hackers; and many, many others. ... Although it was not yet a computer for the general public, the Altair brought that dream a lot closer.
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   Open Letter to Hobbyists

   An unknown person had brought a copy of Microsoft Altair BASIC on paper tape to that meeting. ... Bill Gates
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   Microsoft BASIC

   It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first BASIC (and indeed the first high level programming language) available for the MITS Altair 8800 hobbyist microcomputer. The Altair BASIC interpreter was developed by Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates with help from Monte Davidoff, using a self made Intel 8080 software simulator running on a PDP-10 minicomputer.
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   History of Microsoft

   The interpreter worked at the demo and MITS agreed to distribute Altair BASIC. ... ↑ "Bill Gates: A Timeline".
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   History of personal computers

   The Altair also inspired the software development efforts of Paul Allen and his high school friend Bill Gates who developed a BASIC interpreter for the Altair, and then formed Microsoft. ... It was arguably the Altair computer that spawned the development of Apple, as well as Microsoft which produced and sold the Altair BASIC programming language interpreter, Microsoft's first product.
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   Microsoft

   After the demonstration, MITS agreed to distribute Altair BASIC. ... Steve Ballmer joined the company on June 11, 1980, and later succeeded Bill Gates as CEO.
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    Criticism of Microsoft

    When Microsoft discovered that its first product, Altair BASIC, was subject to widespread illegal copying, Microsoft founder Bill Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists that openly accused many hobbyists of stealing software.

Explore the following pages on Powerset:

• Altair BASIC,
• Altair 8800,
• Bill Gates,
• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution,
• Open Letter to Hobbyists,
• Microsoft BASIC,
• History of Microsoft,
• History of personal computers,
• Microsoft,
• Criticism of Microsoft