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Which came first, Harry Potter or Microsoft?

Which came first, Harry Potter or Microsoft?
Microsoft
1975 — 22 years before Harry Potter

Microsoft came first, by 22 years. Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque.

Side by side

Harry Potter Microsoft
Year 1997 1975
Date 1997-06-26 1975-04-04
Category media company
What happened Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in the UK. Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque.

Harry Potter

Bloomsbury published the first book in June 1997 with a print run of 500 copies, most of which went to libraries, after twelve other publishers had rejected the manuscript. The company's chairman gave the first chapter to his eight-year-old daughter, who demanded the rest. It came out the same year as Netflix was founded and a year before Google.

Microsoft

Microsoft was founded in April 1975 to sell a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 — a product they had demonstrated before writing all of it. It predates Apple by almost exactly one year. The hyphen was dropped in 1976 and the company moved to Washington state in 1979.

Common questions

Which came first, Harry Potter or Microsoft?
Microsoft, by 22 years — 1975 against 1997.
When did Harry Potter start?
1997. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in the UK.
When did Microsoft start?
1975. Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)

How these figures are compiled and checked