Bill Gates told Ed Roberts he had a BASIC for the Altair before he had written a line of it, and Paul Allen wrote the loader by hand as his plane came in to land at Albuquerque. Five years later IBM came asking for an operating system. Gary Kildall, who had written the one everybody used, missed or mishandled the meeting, depending on who tells it. Tim Paterson had knocked up an imitation in a few weeks. Gates bought it for seventy-five thousand dollars and kept the rights.
This chapter has not been serialised yet. It will appear on Substack first, and this page will carry its opening when it does.
- In this chapter
- Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Monte Davidoff, Ed Roberts, Jack Sams, Gary Kildall, Dorothy Kildall, Tim Paterson
- The idea it builds
- Writing software for a chip you do not have by simulating it on another computer, and the clean-room copy that made the PC clone legal.