Editing Traf-O-Data (section)

{{short description|Early predecessor company to Microsoft}}
{{Infobox company
| name                = Traf-O-Data
| logo                = Logo of Traf-O-Data.svg
| type                = 
| industry            = [[Transportation engineering]]
| fate                = Renamed to [[Microsoft]]
| successor           = [[Microsoft|Microsoft Corporation]]
| founded             = {{Start date and age|1972}}<br />[[Seattle]], [[Washington (state)|Washington]], U.S.
| founders            = [[Bill Gates]]<br />[[Paul Allen]]<br />Paul Gilbert
| defunct             = {{End date and age|1975}}
| hq_location_city    = Seattle, Washington
| hq_location_country = U.S.
| key_people          = 
| products            = 
| num_employees       = 
| num_employees_year  = 
| revenue             = 
| homepage            = 
}}
{{Bill Gates series}}
'''Traf-O-Data''' was a business partnership between [[Bill Gates]], [[Paul Allen]] and Paul Gilbert that existed in the 1970s. The objective was to read the raw data from roadway [[Traffic count#Traffic counter device|traffic counters]] and create reports for traffic engineers. The company had only modest success but the experience was instrumental in the creation of [[Microsoft|Microsoft Corporation]] a few years later.<ref>{{cite web|title=Traf-O-Data |publisher=New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science |url=http://startup.nmnaturalhistory.org/gallery/story.php?ii=45 |access-date=2011-05-08 |url-status=unfit |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120323162008/http://startup.nmnaturalhistory.org/gallery/story.php?ii=45 |archivedate=March 23, 2012 }}</ref>