The Warehouse in Albuquerque

In 1975, a thirteen-year-old named Bill Gates convinced his high school to let him test software for a local company. Nobody paid much attention. But twenty years later, when Microsoft became the most valuable company on earth, journalists scrambled to trace the origins of this revolution. They expected to find gleaming laboratories or Ivy League think tanks. Instead, they found a cramped garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico — a dusty, forgettable city that most Americans could not even spell correctly.…