History of Seattle - Emergence of Technology: 1970 Onwards

Emergence of Technology: 1970 Onwards

In 1979, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, founders of Microsoft, Inc., moved their then-small company from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the suburbs of their native Seattle. By 1985, sales were over $140 million, by 1990, $1.18 billion, and by 1995, Microsoft was the world's most profitable corporation, Allen and Gates were billionaires, and literally thousands of their past and present employees were millionaires.

Microsoft spawned a host of other companies in the Seattle area: millionaire employees often left to found their own companies, and Allen, after his own departure from Microsoft, became a major investor in new companies. Seattle-area companies that owe their origins at least indirectly to Microsoft include RealNetworks, AttachmateWRQ, InfoSpace, and a host of others. Quite unlike Boeing, Microsoft has served as a catalyst for the creation of a whole realm of industry. Microsoft has also taken a much more active hand than Boeing in public works in the area, donating software to many schools (including the University of Washington).

Seattle has also been experiencing quite good growth in the biotechnology and coffee sectors, and Seattle-based Nordstrom is now a national brand.

Paul Allen, whose fortune was made through Microsoft though he has long since ceased to be an active participant in the company, has been a major force in Seattle politics, for better or worse. He attempted a voter initiative to build the Seattle Commons, a huge park in South Lake Union and the Cascade District, and even offered to put up his own money to endow a security force for the park, but it was defeated at the polls. (Allen is now the leader of the movement to redevelop this same area as a biotech center.) He did get a football stadium for the Seattle Seahawks through a successful statewide ballot initiative, and founded the Experience Music Project (originally intended as a Jimi Hendrix museum) on the grounds of Seattle Center.

Seattle's bid for the world stage by hosting the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 did not play out as planned. Instead, the city saw became the site of the first great street confrontation between the anti-globalization movement and the World Trade Organization on November 30, 1999. While many of those in the streets, and most of those in the suites, were from out of town or even out of country, much of the groundwork of Seattle hosting both the event and the protests against it can be attributed to local forces.

Seattle today is physically and demographically not so different from the Seattle of the 1960s. It is still filled with single family households, still mostly white with as many Asians as blacks, still progressive, still with about half a million people, still almost entirely without a centralized method of planning. The suburbs have grown, but they are also in essentially the same state as before, if a little more independent. Seattle's economy is more vibrant now, and richer, and there is certainly an increase in cultural activity, but the largest employer is still Boeing. The Commons was defeated, just as Jim Ellis was in the 1960s. Pioneer Square still retains some of the ambience of Skid Road. There's still terrible traffic on the freeways, air quality is problematic. The city, or its setting, is still physically beautiful.