20-Year Old Bill Gates Gives Address

By Marcel Brown |

Young Bill GatesMarch 27, 1976

Bill Gates gives the opening address at the First Annual World Altair Computer Convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico, giving a talk about software piracy.

In early 1975 Gates had been a student at Harvard but along with Paul Allen developed a version of the BASIC language for the MITS Altair computer. They demoed it to MITS in March of that year and MITS agreed to distribute it then hired Gates and Allen to continue development. Gates and Allen soon moved to Albuquerque to form Microsoft (originally “Micro-Soft”) since MITS’s headquarters was also located in Albuquerque.

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