Paul Allen in the context of Japanese battleship Musashi

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the rise of personal computers through software like Windows, and has since expanded to Internet services, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, video gaming, and other fields. Often described as a Big Tech company, Microsoft is the largest software company by revenue, one of the most valuable public companies, and one of the most valuable brands globally.

Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to market BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. During the 41 years from 1980 to 2021 Microsoft released 9 versions of MS-DOS with a median frequency of 2 years, and 13 versions of Windows with a median frequency of 3 years. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO) and subsequent rise in its share price created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market. Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000. He oversaw the then-largest of Microsoft's corporate acquisitions in Skype Technologies in 2011, an increased focus on hardware that led to its first in-house PC line, the Surface, in 2012, and the formation of Microsoft Mobile through Nokia. Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the company has changed focus towards cloud computing, as well as its acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016. Under Nadella's direction, the company has expanded its video gaming business to support the Xbox brand, establishing the Microsoft Gaming division in 2022 and the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in 2023.

William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Following Microsoft's 1986 initial public offering, Gates became the world's then-youngest billionaire in 1987, at age 31. Forbes magazine ranked him as the world's wealthiest person for 18 out of 24 years between 1995 and 2017, including 13 years consecutively from 1995 to 2007. Gates became the first centibillionaire in 1999, when his net worth briefly surpassed US$100 billion. According to Forbes, as of May 2025, his net worth stood at US$115.1 billion, making him the thirteenth-richest individual in the world.

Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Gates was privately educated at Lakeside School, where he befriended Allen and developed his computing interests. In 1973, he enrolled at Harvard University, where he took classes including Math 55 and graduate level computer science courses, but he dropped out in 1975 to co-found and lead Microsoft. He served as its CEO for the next 25 years and also became president and chairman of the board when the company incorporated in 1981. Succeeded as CEO by Steve Ballmer in 2000, he transitioned to chief software architect, a position he held until 2008. He stepped down as chairman of the board in 2014 and became technology adviser to CEO Satya Nadella and other Microsoft leaders, a position he still holds. He resigned from the board in 2020.

SpaceShipOne is an experimental air-launched rocket-powered aircraft with sub-orbital spaceflight capability at speeds of up to 3,000 ft/s (2,000 mph) / 910 m/s (3,300 km/h)using a hybrid rocket motor. The design features a unique "feathering" atmospheric reentry system where the rear half of the wing and the twin tail booms folds 70 degrees upward along a hinge running the length of the wing; this increases drag while retaining stability. SpaceShipOne completed the first crewed private spaceflight in 2004. That same year, it won the US$10 million Ansari X Prize and was immediately retired from active service. Its mother ship was named "White Knight". Both craft were developed and flown by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was a joint venture between Paul Allen and Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's aviation company. Allen provided the funding of approximately US$25 million.

Rutan has indicated that ideas about the project began as early as 1994 and the full-time development cycle time to the 2004 accomplishments was about three years. The vehicle first achieved supersonic flight on December 17, 2003, which was also the one-hundredth anniversary of the Wright Brothers' historic first powered flight. SpaceShipOne's first official spaceflight, known as flight 15P, was piloted by Mike Melvill. A few days before that flight, the Mojave Air and Space Port was the first commercial spaceport licensed in the United States. A few hours after that flight, Melvill became the first licensed U.S. commercial astronaut. The overall project name was "Tier One" which has evolved into Tier 1b with a goal of taking a successor ship's first passengers into space.

General Magic was an American software and electronics company co-founded by Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld, and Marc Porat. Based in Mountain View, California, the company developed precursors to "USB, software modems, small touchscreens, touchscreen controller ICs, ASICs, multimedia email, networked games, streaming TV, and early e-commerce notions." General Magic's main product was Magic Cap, the operating system used in 1994 by Sony's Magic Link and the Motorola Envoy PDAs. It also introduced the programming language Telescript. After announcing it would cease operations in 2002, it was liquidated in 2004 with Paul Allen purchasing most of its patents.

Popular Electronics was an American magazine published by John August Media, LLC, and hosted at TechnicaCuriosa.com. The magazine was started by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company in October 1954 for electronics hobbyists and experimenters. It soon became the "World's Largest-Selling Electronics Magazine". In April 1957, Ziff-Davis reported an average net paid circulation of 240,151 copies. Popular Electronics was published until October 1982 when, in November 1982, Ziff-Davis launched a successor magazine, Computers & Electronics. During its last year of publication by Ziff-Davis, Popular Electronics reported an average monthly circulation of 409,344 copies. The title was sold to Gernsback Publications, and their Hands-On Electronics magazine was renamed to Popular Electronics in February 1989, and published until December 1999. The Popular Electronics trademark was then acquired by John August Media, who revived the magazine, the digital edition of which is hosted at TechnicaCuriosa.com, along with sister titles, Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Astronomy.

A cover story on Popular Electronics could launch a new product or company. The most famous issue, January 1975, had the Altair 8800 computer on the cover and ignited the home computer revolution. Paul Allen showed that issue to Bill Gates. They wrote a BASIC interpreter for the Altair computer and started Microsoft.

The Museum of Pop Culture (or MOPOP) is a nonprofit museum in Seattle, Washington, United States, dedicated to contemporary popular culture. It was founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2000 as the Experience Music Project. Since then MOPOP has organized dozens of exhibits, 17 of which have toured across the U.S. and internationally.

The museum—formerly known as Experience Music Project, Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (or EMP|SFM), and later EMP Museum until November 2016—has initiated many public programs including "Sound Off!", an annual 21-and-under battle-of-the-bands that supports the all-ages scene; and "Pop Conference", an annual gathering of academics, critics, musicians, and music buffs.

Lakeside School (abbreviated as Lakeside or LS) is an independent, co-educational day school located in Seattle, Washington. It enrolls approximately 900 students in grades 5 through 12, and is divided into a Middle School (grades 5-8) and an Upper School (grades 9-12).

Founded in 1919, Lakeside has one of the largest endowments among independent schools in the United States, reaching $260 million as of March 2024. It launched one of the earliest continuously-operating free summer educational programs in 1965 called the Lakeside Educational Enrichment Program (LEEP), designed to promote diversity by enrolling its first Black students of color. Lakeside offers need-based financial aid to students with family incomes under $250,000. Its list of alumni includes Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Greenpeace USA executive director Annie Leonard, American actor Adam West, Major League Baseball athlete Corbin Carroll, and former Washington governor Booth Gardner.

The Allen Telescope Array (ATA), formerly known as the One Hectare Telescope (1hT), is a radio telescope array dedicated to astronomical observations and a simultaneous search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The array is situated at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in Shasta County, 290 miles (470 km) northeast of San Francisco, California.

The project was originally developed as a joint effort between the SETI Institute and the Radio Astronomy Laboratory (RAL) at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), with funds obtained from an initial US$12.5 million donation by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and Nathan Myhrvold. The first phase of construction was completed and the ATA finally became operational on 11 October 2007 with 42 antennas (ATA-42), after Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft) had pledged an additional $13.5 million to support the construction of the first and second phases.

The Allen Institute for Brain Science is a division of the Allen Institute, based in Seattle, Washington, that focuses on bioscience research. Founded in 2003, it is dedicated to accelerating the understanding of how the human brain works. With the intent of catalyzing brain research in different areas, the Allen Institute provides free data and tools to scientists.

Started with $100 million in seed money from Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen in 2003, the institute tackles projects at the leading edge of science—far-reaching projects at the intersection of biology and technology. The resulting data create free, publicly available resources that fuel discovery for countless researchers. Hongkui Zeng is the current director of the institute.