Happy 49th birthday Microsoft!

On April 4, 1975, two young men, Bill Gates and the late Paul Allen, officially founded the firm that would later be known as Micro-Soft (later shortened to Microsoft) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Today is, of course, the 49th birthday of the corporation that has grown to become one of the world's largest.

The corporation is not making a big deal about today, like it did in 2023 when it celebrated its 48th birthday. The official X (previously Twitter) account has posted a statement commemorating the occasion:

In late 1974, Gates and Allen saw an article in Popular Electronics magazine about the Altair 8800, the world's first microprocessor. It was manufactured by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Gates and Allen believed they could produce a BASIC version suitable for the Altair 8800 computer. They relocated to Albuquerque in 1975 to officially establish Micro-Soft.

Gates and Allen founded Microsoft in a suite at the Sundowner Hotel, near Route 66. In 2014, the Sundowner Hotel was turned into low-cost apartments. In 1975, Gates and Allen relocated the business to a suitable office facility in Albuquerque. In 2006, a plaque was installed to memorialize the spot, but it has been removed from its stone base once.

Allen came up with the moniker Micro_Soft because he believed it was a fantastic mashup of "microcomputer" and "software". Gates and Allen waited until November 26, 1976, almost a year after the company's inception, to register the name Micro-Soft with the Secretary of State in New Mexico. It wasn't until 1979 that Gates renamed the business Microsoft, without the hyphen, for the first time.

Marc McDonald is recognized as being Microsoft's first salaried employee. He joined the company in 1976 as a system software engineer. In 1977, at least two more employees joined the company. Ric Weiland and were both employed as computer programmers.

Happy 49th birthday, Microsoft! You've had a pretty fantastic run. We're looking forward to hearing what you have planned for your 50th birthday celebration in a year.