Bill Gates Celebrates Microsoft’s 50th Anniversary With Its Original Source Code

Microsoft might not exist today if it weren’t for the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. Featuring the computer kit Altair 8800 on its front page, the tech hobbyist magazine fell into the hands of Bill Gates and the late Paul Allen, two childhood friends that were quickly inspired to create a software program for the computer.

“At the time, personal computers were practically non-existent,” recalled Gates in a blog post celebrating five decades of Microsoft. The subsequent code...