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+--- Thread: Happy 42nd Birthday to the Microsoft name... (/thread-9602.html)
Happy 42nd Birthday to the Microsoft name... - zeno333 - 11-30-2017 02:04 AM
On November 29, 1975 Bill gates first used the name "Micro-Soft" in a memo to Paul Allen...{the hyphen was later dropped...}. Happy 42nd Birthday to the "Microsoft" name!!! Exactly 1 year earlier the Popular Electronics magazine that featured the MITS Altair hit the news stand on November 29, 1974. That issue started it all for Microsoft.
RE: Happy 42nd Birthday to the Microsoft name... - jebem - 11-30-2017 08:03 AM
A portuguese company called Microsoft was based in Lisbon since the early 80's and they were not aware that an american company had adopted the same name.
This was not an issue until the internet became popular in late 90's.
So microsoft.pt had a fight with microsoft.com and have accepted good money to let the domain name go to the american company.
I use to visit their shop at Luciano Cordeiro street as my company was on the same street.
They use to sell several brands of pre-personal computer era, like TRS, Canon, Sanyo, Epson, many of them running the popular CP/M 80 and custom applications.
Then IBM changed the business with a new 16 bit architecture Professional Computer based on the Intel 8088 microprocessor. IBM even published the BIOS specification and assembly code listing in a huge book that i brought at the time.
However IBM wanted a operating system similar to CP/M 80 but it should be proprietary.
They contracted an obscure company to develop such OS.
That company was Microsoft and they wanted to sell the OS to IBM.
IBM said no, as they wanted another company to take care of the development and support.
And this was the jackpot for Microsoft.
The IBM PC-DOS 1.0 was born licensed to Microsoft.
About the same time, the company where i was working, Wang Computers, released the Wang PC, a real 16-bit machine based on the Intel 8086 that was four times faster and had localized character set for most countries and was running a proprietary Wang MS-DOS licensed to Microsoft as well.
Later on the Far East started cloning the IBM PC and Microsoft start selling their version of the OS. The MS-DOS was born.
And the rest is history.
RE: Happy 42nd Birthday to the Microsoft name... - grsbanks - 11-30-2017 01:13 PM
Actually Microsoft started out as they intended to continue. They bought 86-DOS from Tim Paterson and used that as the basis for MS-DOS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Paterson
RE: Happy 42nd Birthday to the Microsoft name... - pier4r - 11-30-2017 03:25 PM
Jebem you worked at Wang Computers? I read that their desktop calculators were the first scientific ones back in the 1960 (then HP came).
On wikipedia the history of the company is quite sad after they were fixed with battling IBM for large mainframes.
RE: Happy 42nd Birthday to the Microsoft name... - zeno333 - 11-30-2017 10:57 PM
(11-30-2017 03:25 PM)pier4r Wrote: Jebem you worked at Wang Computers? I read that their desktop calculators were the first scientific ones back in the 1960 (then HP came).
On wikipedia the history of the company is quite sad after they were fixed with battling IBM for large mainframes.
I had a physics class the fall of 1976 in College, and they had a Wang calculator in the room with Log and Trig functions on it.. It used orange Nixie tubes and I remember how slow the result from Trig functions were with it...
RE: Happy 42nd Birthday to the Microsoft name... - jebem - 12-01-2017 01:37 AM
(11-30-2017 03:25 PM)pier4r Wrote: Jebem you worked at Wang Computers? I read that their desktop calculators were the first scientific ones back in the 1960 (then HP came).
On wikipedia the history of the company is quite sad after they were fixed with battling IBM for large mainframes.
yap, i spent more than 20 years of my professional life working for Wang Computers Europe.
We were a large community around the world, co-workers and customers.
I enjoyed the 2200 and the PCS computer series from the late 70's and early 80's (CRT monitor based, so no nixie tubes anymore). These machines had a solid state O.S. with an integrated BASIC interpreter having a lot of extended functions, like scientific ROM modules able to perform matrix operations with dedicated functions, specific peripherals support like printers, telecommunications devices, Philips type cassette storage, 8" floppies, and later support for hard disk storage (mainly Control Data Systems).
But i worked mostly with the Wang VS series that were very sophisticated for their time (early 80's), offering 4th generation relational databases, compiled programming languages with BASIC, COBOL74, FORTAN and even C, advanced distributed systems using telecommunications (X.25, IBM SNA), and the most advanced Office application at the time (not only word processing, but audio and video integration, something that was unique at the time; all this happened before the IBM-PC).
We had a few of those nixie tubes Wang scientific calculators lying around in the warehouse and nobody care about them.
Now I realize that i lost an opportunity of grab one or two for my collection.