The History of Microsoft (1986)
For Microsoft, 1986 brings a slice or royalty as Prince Charles of Great Britain pays a visit to the Microsoft Showroom at the Infomart in Dallas, we move to a new Corporate Campus and our stock goes public at $21 per share.
1986-12-30 19:00:00 - Microsoft
January 17, 1986
A survey of lunchroom consumption figures for July through October 1985 reveals that Diet Coke topped the employee popularity list.
January 30, 1986
Microsoft and Santa Cruz Operation announce new agreements and joint marketing plans concerning Microsoft Networks for XENIX. SCO will be the prime distributor of XENIX System V to the VAR (Value Added Retailer) and VAD (Value added Dealer) channels, and will also distribute all of Microsoft's language products for XENIX including BASIC, PASCAL, FORTRAN, and COBOL.
February 26, 1986
Microsoft moves to its new Corporate Campus, buildings 1 through 4, in Redmond, Washington.
March 13, 1986
Microsoft stock goes public at $21 per share, rising to $28 per share by the end of the first trading day. The initial public offering raises $61 million.
April 22, 1986
Direct shipment of software to the Republic of South Africa is stopped, and the relationship with the local distributor has been terminated due to the South African government's policy of apartheid. Previously, support for anti-apartheid activities had been demonstrated by the donation of all profits earned from South Africa software sales to the American Friends Service Committee.
May 9, 1986
Microsoft® Press releases "Windows: The Official Guide to Microsoft's Operating Environment," by Nancy Andrews. This is the first book available on this operating environment and is a complete introduction to the basic operations of the Microsoft Windows® environment, the seven Windows desktop applications, and using Windows Write and Windows Paint.
July 3, 1986
IBM has recently announced the PC Convertible, which uses 3.5-inch disks. Consequently, all applications software that runs on Microsoft® MS-DOS®, programming languages, hardware, and Microsoft Windows® products will be made available on 3.5-inch disks. The disks will be provided free to dealers, distributors, and customers who request them.
July 9, 1986
Microsoft announces Microsoft MACH 10, an add-on board which makes Microsoft Windows run up to 2-1/2 times faster on an IBM PC, PC XT, or Portable PC.
July 21, 1986
Bill Gates makes the cover of FORTUNE magazine for the first time and is featured in an eight-page article entitled "The Deal That Made Bill Gates, Age 30, $350 Million: The Inside Story of Microsoft's Stock Issue."
August 20, 1986
Microsoft begins shipping Excel, Word, File, Multiplan, and Chart for the Macintosh on 800K, double-sided disks.
September 5, 1986
Steve Ballmer completes the first "translakebillg" swim after losing a challenge to the MS-DOS 5 team to complete their bug fixes by Sept. 1.
September 17, 1986
Microsoft announces the availability of extensions to MS-DOS that support the use of CD-ROM disk drives with personal computers. These extensions allow any computer that runs MS-DOS 3.1 or 3.2 and has a CD-ROM drive to read data from any CD-ROM disk formatted in the recently issued High Sierra CD-ROM file format. Microsoft will license these extensions directly to CD-ROM drive manufacturers and they are available only on an OEM basis.
October 2, 1986
Microsoft Works for the Macintosh ships.
October 10, 1986
The Microsoft Systems Journal magazine makes its debut this week. Targeted toward software developers, the magazine will carry articles on present and future versions of the Microsoft® MS-DOS® and Microsoft XENIX® operating systems, Microsoft Windows®, languages, and networking. The first issue is devoted exclusively to Windows.
October 22, 1986
Aldus, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft form a desktop publishing alliance to market their products as a complete desktop publishing solution. Microsoft will provide Windows and Word. Together, the companies plan to spend more than $2 million on marketing activities aimed at promoting the cooperative solution.
1986 Revenue/Headcount:
The 1986 fiscal year-end sales total $197,514,000.
The 1986 fiscal Year employee headcount totals 1,153 people.
Official Subsidiaries Launched:
Microsoft Corporation, Limited (Japan), Microsoft International, B.V. (Holland)
Notable New Hires:
Nathan Myhrvold
David Vaskevitch
Darryl Rubin
Richard Fade
William H. Neukom