Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Traf-O-Data before Microsoft to sell a traffic-data computer system.
The company began in 1972, when Gates and Allen were still teenagers. Its purpose was to process information from pneumatic road tubes, which counted vehicles passing along streets. The system converted the raw traffic readings into reports that could help local authorities study traffic flow.
Traf-O-Data used a computer based on the Intel 8008 microprocessor. Although the venture was not a major commercial success, it gave Gates and Allen practical experience designing hardware, writing software, and presenting a product to customers.
The company is often mentioned as an early predecessor to Microsoft, but it was not Microsoft under another name. Microsoft was founded separately in 1975 after Gates and Allen developed a version of BASIC for the Altair 8800. Traf-O-Data therefore belongs to the pair’s pre-Microsoft history.