The history of Microsoft has given enough to tell in all these years since its founding in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Throughout this journey they have gone through both glorious times and dark times, and there are those who say that it is now, today, when the company is at its best under the leadership of Satya Nadella. Nevertheless, today we are to talk about part of his past, more specifically 1994.
In times when things were simpler Microsoft welcomed the employees who were going to work in the company through an orientation video. This video has been restored from the VHS version of it by the Computer History Archives Project, who for educational and research purposes are responsible for publishing these types of pieces.
In the mid 90’s, everything changed
With the title “Welcome to Microsoft: Employee Orientation“, the company featured the company’s highlights up to then, giving information about what the company did, and even offering talks from Gates himself.
In the almost 15 minute long video we find mentions of the creation of BASIC for Altair systems from MITS, DOS, Windows, and the objectives that the company had at that time, among other issues. Many of the fragments in this video are over 30 years old.
Let’s remember that 1994 was a turning point, not only for the company, but for the whole world. It was in those years that the use of the Internet, the adoption of HTML, or the release of Windows 95 became popular at the public level, selling more than a million copies in just four days.
The video works to clarify the successes of the company more than to train the employee himself, but the truth is that the aura that it gives off makes a smile appear before how much the industry has changed since then (and how much it remains the same).
The channel, specialized in bringing back this type of videos, has content from a multitude of technology companies that made history. IBM, Apple or Microsoft are some of the many examples that we can see on this channel, offering information on a wide range of revolutionary products and the ambitions of this type of company at that time.
More information | Computer History Archives Project