From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Sat Nov 16 2002 - 12:56:05 MST
On Sat, 16 Nov 2002, John K Clark wrote:
> The first PC was the Altar 8080, it came out in 1975, the software it
Altair was one of the first, but it was irrelevant in terms of numbers
deployed. We can assume the personal computing started with CP/M, Apple,
Commodore, Atari and Sinclair, etc. IBM PC development started in 1978,
and was shipped in 1981 IIRC.
> ran on came from Microsoft. The international headquarters and primary
Interesting. You've been around longer than me, I didn't research anything
before 1978. (Then, I don't think much of computer which couldn't drive a
CRT).
<http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Gates.Mirick.html>
In December of 1974, Allen was on his way to visit Gates when along the
way he stopped to browse the current magazines. What he saw changed his
and Bill Gates's lives forever. On the cover of Popular Electronics was a
picture of the Altair 8080 and the headline "World's First Microcomputer
Kit to Rival Commercial Models." He bought the issue and rushed over to
Gates's dorm room. They both recognized this as their big opportunity.
The two knew that the home computer market was about to explode and that
someone would need to make software for the new machines. Within a few
days, Gates had called MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems),
the makers of the Altair. He told the company that he and Allen had
developed a BASIC that could be used on the Altair [Teamgates.com,
9/29/96]. This was a lie. They had not even written a line of code. They
had neither an Altair nor the chip that ran the computer. The MITS company
did not know this and was very interested in seeing their BASIC. So, Gates
and Allen began working feverishly on the BASIC they had promised. The
code for the program was left mostly up to Bill Gates while Paul Allen
began working on a way to simulate the Altair with the schools PDP-10.
Eight weeks later, the two felt their program was ready. Allen was to fly
to MITS and show off their creation. The day after Allen arrived at MITS,
it was time to test their BASIC. Entering the program into the company's
Altair was the first time Allen had ever touched one. If the Altair
simulation he designed or any of Gates's code was faulty, the
demonstration would most likely have ended in failure. This was not the
case, and the program worked perfectly the first time [Wallace, 1992, p.
80]. MITS arranged a deal with Gates and Allen to buy the rights to their
BASIC.[Teamgates.com, 9/29/96] Gates was convinced that the software
market had been born. Within a year, Bill Gates had dropped out of Harvard
and Microsoft was formed.
Well, at least he wasn't an idiot programmer.
> research facility for Microsoft at the time was the college dormitory
> room of Bill Gates. Incidentally one of the chief producers of
> software for the Apple 2 was Microsoft.
This is not how I remember things.
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