Programming language interpreter software, first product developed by Microsoft
The title page of the assembly language code that produced Altair BASIC
Original author(s)
Micro-Soft
Developer(s)
Bill Gates
Paul Allen
Monte Davidoff[1][2]
Initial release
2.0 (4K and 8K editions) July 1, 1975; 48 years ago (1975-07-01)[3][4][5][6]
Stable release
5.0
/ 14 July 1978; 45 years ago (1978-07-14)
Platform
Altair 8800
Type
Microsoft BASIC
Altair BASIC is a discontinued interpreter for the BASIC programming language that ran on the MITS Altair 8800 and subsequent S-100 bus computers. It was Microsoft's first product (as Micro-Soft), distributed by MITS under a contract. Altair BASIC was the start of the Microsoft BASIC product range.
^Raiders of the Lost Altair BASIC Source Code, Andrew Orlowski, 13 May 2001, The Register
^Altair 8800 BASIC Reference_Manual 1975, Page 3 of PDF, ...and the joint authors of the ALTAIR BASIC interpreter, Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff, will be glad to assist you.
^Microsoft Fast Facts: 1975, Posted May 9, 2000, Bill Gates and Paul Allen complete BASIC and license it to their first customer, MITS of Albuquerque, N.M., the manufacturer of the Altair 8800 personal computer. This is the first computer language program written for a personal computer., Gates and Allen’s BASIC officially ships as version 2.0 in both 4K and 8K editions.
^microsoft's timeline from 1975 - 1990 Archived 2008-05-14 at the Wayback Machine, July 1, Bill Gates' and Paul Allen's BASIC officially ships as version 2.0 in both 4K and 8K editions.
^Computer_Notes 1975 01 05, Page 14, ALTAIR BASIC, CLAIM: Not just anybody's BASIC, FACT: Not just anybody's BASIC, BY: KEITH BRITTON, ROBERT MULLEN, Altair BASIC version 2.0 had a serious problem in that a jump out of a FOR.... NEXT loop left garbage on the stack. . Do this too often and the stack would grow relentlessly down from high memory until it ate the program. This has been fixed in version 3.0, according to Paul Allen
AltairBASIC is a discontinued interpreter for the BASIC programming language that ran on the MITS Altair 8800 and subsequent S-100 bus computers. It...
programming language for the machine was Microsoft's founding product, AltairBASIC. The Altair 8800 had no built-in screen or video output, so it would have to...
frustration with most computer hobbyists who were using his company's AltairBASIC software without having paid for it. He asserted that such widespread...
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Gates saw the magazine and began writing software for the Altair, later called AltairBASIC. They moved to Albuquerque to work for MITS and in July 1975...
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that more than 90% of the users of Microsoft AltairBASIC had not paid Microsoft for it and the Altair "hobby market" was in danger of eliminating the...
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Altair 8800. His coworkers included Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who created the first programming language for the Altair, Altair BASIC...
the most important pieces of software for the Altair, and one of the most heavily pirated, was AltairBASIC from the recently formed Microsoft. Wozniak...
programming language for the machine was Microsoft's founding product, AltairBASIC. In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak sold the Apple I computer circuit...
floating-point arithmetic routines for AltairBASIC while he was at Harvard. The routines were subsequently reused in Microsoft BASIC products for other systems....
Telemetry Systems began selling its Altair 8800 microcomputer kit by mail order. Microsoft released its first product AltairBASIC later that year, and hobbyists...
Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating...
by MITS in punch tape format for the Altair 8800 shortly after the machine itself, immediately cementing BASIC as the primary language of early microcomputers...
Gates. They saw potential to develop an implementation of BASIC for the system. Gates called Altair manufacturer Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems...
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