On April 4, 1975, at a time when most Americans used typewriters, childhood friends Bill Gates (68) and Paul Allen (1953 – 2018) 
found Microsoft, a company that makes computer software.

Originally based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Microsoft relocated
to Washington State in 1979 and eventually grew into a major multinational technology corporation. In 1987, the year after
Microsoft went public, 31-year-old Gates became the world’s
youngest billionaire.

Gates and Allen started Microsoft—originally called Micro-Soft,
for microprocessors and software—in order to produce software
for the Altair 8800 (below) an early personal computer.

Historians will likely view Bill Gates as a business figure as important to computers as John D. Rockefeller was to oil.

The Radio Shack TRS-80 Micro Computer System debuted in 1977.  

Today, the TRS-80 is still remembered fondly by tech enthusiasts 
as one of the most important computers ever created. 

On June 14, 1951, the U.S. Census Bureau dedicated UNIVAC,
the first commercially produced electronic digital computer in
the United States. UNIVAC, which stood for Universal Automatic Computer, was developed by a team of engineers led by J.
Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, makers of ENIAC, the first
general-purpose electronic digital computer. These giant
computers, which used thousands of vacuum tubes for
computation, were the forerunners of today’s digital
computers.

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee

On April 30, 1993, four years after publishing a proposal for
“an idea of linked information systems,” computer scientist
Tim Berners-Lee (above) released the source code for the
world’s first web browser and editor. Originally called Mesh,
the browser that he dubbed WorldWideWeb became the first
royalty-free, easy-to-use means of browsing the emerging
information network that developed into the internet as we
know it today.

Berners-Lee was a fellow at CERN, the research organization headquartered in Switzerland. Other research institutions like
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford
University had developed complex systems for internally
sharing information, and Berners-Lee sought a means of
connecting CERN’s system to others.