On November 26, 1976, Microsoft registered its name as a trademark. At the time, Microsoft was still headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It didn’t move to the Seattle area until 1979.
Microsoft: One word or two?
The trademark registration also cleared up a couple of things about the name of the young company, which was only about a year and a half old and still nearly a decade away from its IPO. Was it one word or two? Was there a hyphen? With the trademark filing, it became one word, and no hyphen. Not Micro Soft. Not Micro-Soft. Just Microsoft. Bill Gates’ (in)famous Open Letter to Hobbyists, written February 3, 1976, was signed “Bill Gates, General Partner, Micro-Soft.”
The name “Micro-Soft” had been Paul Allen’s idea. It evoked the words “software” and “microcomputer,” like the Altair, as opposed to larger mainframes and minicomputers that had been more common prior to the 70s. Microsoft didn’t sell hardware until 1979, but were writing software for small computers even before they could buy one.
Along with the new shorter, simpler name came a change in the corporate logo. The first Microsoft logo was the words Micro and Soft above each other in a typeface called Aki Lines that evoked the grooves on a record. Post 1976, the words in the same font were concatenated into a single word. I think it looked more like a logo for a disco than a software company.
The next corporate logo, which evoked electricity, came along in 1979. Using a font called New Zelek, it looked more like a logo for a thrash metal band than a technology company. By 1982, Microsoft got its logo a haircut and adopted a clean, sans serif ITC Avant Garde font that looked more business-like and less metal. In 1987, it launched its more familiar forward swept logo in Helvetica Black Italic.
I still got a chuckle every time I see a viral post on social media saying that Microsoft’s 1979 logo made it look like a thrash metal band. Because they’re not wrong. And who doesn’t want to see Steve Ballmer jumping around like a sweaty gorilla while he chants the word “developers!” over a loud guitar? Oh, everybody?
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.