Microsoft Binary Format
In computing, Microsoft Binary Format (MBF) was a format for floating point numbers used in Microsoft's BASIC language products including MBASIC, GW-BASIC and QuickBasic prior to version 4.00.
History
In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen were working on Altair BASIC, which they were developing at Harvard University on a PDP-10 running their Altair emulator. One thing still missing was code to handle floating point numbers, needed to support calculations with very big and very small numbers, which would be particularly useful for science and engineering. One of the proposed uses of the Altair was as a scientific calculator.
At a dinner at Courier House, an undergraduate residential house at Harvard, Gates and Allen complained to their dinner companions about having to write this code. One of them, Monte Davidoff, told them he had written floating point routines before and convinced Gates and Allen that he was capable of writing the Altair BASIC floating point code. At the time there was no standard for floating point numbers, so Davidoff had to come up with his own. He decided 32 bits would allow enough range and precision. When Allen had to demonstrate it to MITS, it was the first time it ran on an actual Altair. But it worked and when he entered ‘PRINT 2+2’, Davidoff's adding routine gave the right answer.
