Microsoft

Beginning with BASIC

It started with strings of code being written by hand on yellow legal pads in a dorm room at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Stopping only to eat pizza and take sporadic naps, and with the help of a few classmates, Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote their first programming language in just eight weeks.

Almost 40 years later, the same frenzied pace still powers the company that Gates and Allen started: Microsoft. But now, the programmers have the highest tech computers at their fingertips. They have espresso machines to help keep them awake and a full-service cafeteria available to satisfy their hunger.

The goal of changing the world with technology, however, is still the same.

From Dropout to Doctoral Degree

Bill Gates never earned a college degree. He enrolled at Harvard as a math major in 1974 but dropped out to help build Microsoft with Paul Allen. In 2007, Harvard invited him back and awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. “We recognize the most illustrious member of the Harvard College class of 1977 never to have graduated from Harvard,” Provost Steven Hyman said. Gates started his speech with a message to his dad, who had traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the ceremony. “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree,” he said.

Paying for Computer Time

Very few schools had computers in 1968. But thanks to $3,000 raised by a group of mothers at a rummage sale, Lakeside School in Seattle, Washington, was able to lease time on a Teletype Model 30 computer. The lease allowed Lakeside’s students, including Bill Gates and Paul Allen, to have limited access to the computer. The two friends spent as much time as possible learning how to use it and quickly became experts. Gates returned to his high school to give a graduation speech in 2005. “If there had been no Lakeside, there would have been no Microsoft,” he told the students.