Topic > ||Microsoft Corporation is the market leading US computer software company. Microsoft was founded in 1975 by William H. Gates III and Paul Allen, both of whom met during their studies, thanks to a common love of programming with the Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-10 computer. In 1975 they collaborated on the first version of the BASIC programming language for the MITS Altair computer, the first personal computer. This led to the creation of Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that same year. In 1979, Gates and Allen moved the company to Redmond, Washington. Allen resigned in 1983 for health reasons, but later rejoined the board. The company went from 15 employees and $500,000 in revenue in 1978 to having more than 22,000 employees and $11.4 billion in revenue in 1997. In 1981, Microsoft took its first step toward diversification in the programming language market and released MS-DOS, an early computer or personal computer (PC) operating system from IBM. Microsoft then convinced other computer manufacturers to distribute licensed MS-DOS , ...