Today’s blog is about Gary Kildall, the man who should
have been Bill Gates. It's an absolutely fascinating story, and I think that
more people should know about it.
The year is 1977, and Apple had just become extremely
successful with their first PC, the Apple II. It was the first mass production
personal computer that you didn't have to assemble yourself. Apple: The
Personal Computer. PC industry was already worth 1 billion dollars just three
years after it had begun. For the first time, computers amplified productivity
and human intellect from within the home. IBM, who was in the corporate
computer business of selling large mainframes, just saw the dollar signs. This was the opportunity of all opportunities.
By 1980, IBM had turned their attention to Apple’s success
in the PC market, and realized that they were wrong about the PC. It wasn't
just a hobbyist toy anymore. It could actually be useful. The problem for IBM
is that they were a huge company. They were bureaucratic and very slow when it
came to decisions. It was going to take years for them just to come up with a
PC design, so how were they going to compete in a timely manner?
The answer came in the form of a secret small team within
the company. This small team was assigned the task to create a
business-orientated personal computer. When they got to work, the decision was
made to use off-the-shelf parts to speed up the design process. Using non-IBM
parts was very unusual for the company. With this method, instead of building a
computer from scratch, they managed to have a complete product within a year.
In 1980, IBM had the PC hardware cobbled together. The
only thing needed was software to run on it. What IBM needed was an operating
system. An operating system is like a computer's digital traffic cop. It keeps
track of how files are stored and how the computer handles hardware such as a
mouse, screen, floppy disk drive, and etc. Basically, it's the basis that
allows for a modern computer to run.
At this point, this is where the story starts heating up. IBM
was the biggest tech company of the time, so any PC that they made would have
an incredible impact on the world. So what software was going to run on it?
This was the battle for one operating system that would rule them all. The
stakes are high. Every decision here impacts the rest of all history and herein
lies one of the saddest stories in computing history.
While building their PC in 1980, IBM approached Microsoft
to build the operating system. Before saying a word about the project, IBM
asked Bill Gates, who was initially mistaken for the office intern, to sign a
nondisclosure agreement. Bill Gates had to keep IBM's plan a secret and he
couldn't tell a single soul. When IBM told Gates what they were doing, he
remarked that Microsoft didn't have an operating system. The 25-year-old programmer would point IBM in the
direction of Gary Kildall. Gary was a meek and mild-mannered man, but despite being
unassuming, he had already paved the way for operating systems and personal
computers.
In 1971, Kildall had made a programming language for
Intel's first CPU, the 4004. But he quickly realized that there had to be a way
to control how the chip interacted with the rest of the computer system. In 1972, he solved this problem with CP/M, which stands
for Control Program for Microcomputers. This was the very first PC operating
system. Before CP/M, each computer had to have tailor-made software. Imagine it
like this. It would be like having different types of fuel for every single car
model in existence. With an operating system like CP/M, a programmer only
needed to write software just once, and CP/M would take care of the rest. It
was a way to run the very same software on different computers.
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| Dorothy & Gary |
Despite this, Gary didn't really have much interest in
business matters, and was just doing this as a hobby, but his wife, Dorothy,
convinced him to start a business and start licensing his creation. The result
was a company called Digital Research. By 1979, Digital Research became the
industry standard for operating systems.
In essence, they were the Microsoft of the late 1970s, and
Gary was equivalent to Bill Gates. So IBM had just approached Bill Gates, and
asked him if he could make an operating system for their new PC. And Bill Gates
pointed them in the direction of Gary. So, keen to waste no time, IBM takes Bill's advice and pays
a visit to Gary in Seattle. Bill calls Gary on the phone to give him some
warning that someone is coming to visit. Because of the non-disclosure
agreement, Gates couldn't reveal exactly who was coming to visit.
Unfortunately, Gary was a somewhat chilled-out guy and
didn't really get the full urgency of what Bill was warning. Perhaps he thought
it was just another small company, and not the largest tech company on the
planet. Because of this, Gary isn't home when IBM visits. He's out flying one
of his private planes on business. IBM ends up talking to Gary's wife, Dorothy, who is now
head of operations in Digital Research. The lawyers of IBM begin pushing her to
sign a nondisclosure agreement, essentially to say that they were never there. Dorothy
wasn't impressed by this, and refused to sign the document. The IBM team had a
short temper. After going nowhere with negotiations, they became frustrated and
decided to leave Gary's house.
A few days later, IBM would approach Bill Gates a second
time. Gates, being deterministic and opportunistic in nature, was never going
to give Gary a second chance. He saw that IBM had the potential to change the
PC market into something entirely different: a new cleaned-up business image
instead of the geeky enthusiast image it had. So here comes the clincher. Bill Gates decided to do
something pretty sneaky: he told IBM that Microsoft could in fact make an
operating system, even though they didn't have one. What Microsoft decided to do was just buy an operating
system from a small company down the road for $75,000. This operating system
was called the Quick and Dirty Operating System, or QDOS for short.
If you think that that's a bit of a weird name, there's a
reason for it. The code it used for the software was essentially a rip-off
of CP/M, the operating system that Gary had made. So with this rip-off of CP/M,
Microsoft now had their hands on a functioning operating system. QDOS would
become Microsoft DOS, or MS-DOS for short, and would be packaged with every IBM
PC. So if you've ever used MS-DOS, it could be said that you were using the
Microsoft Dirty Operating System.
However, this name would be officially changed to
Microsoft Disk Operating System. And of course, MS-DOS would eventually become
Microsoft Windows.
The first IBM PC was released in August of 1981. It was
predicted to make 250,000 sales, but it was a smash hit, selling two million
units in a couple of years. IBM had now overtaken Apple as the world's largest
PC manufacturer. With this event, it was now truly ok for the white collar
class to get into PCs. It was no longer for hobbyist freaks and enthusiasts.
Around this time, Gary became the co-host of the show
Computer Chronicles, a TV program that followed in detail the progress of personal
computers at the time.
So everything was falling into place for Bill Gates. He
was getting set to be the richest man in the world. The Dirty Operating System
was one half of the equation, but some smart business sense would complete it. Because
the IBM PC was made from off-the-shelf parts, other manufacturers such as
Compaq and HP began making their own PC clones with the very same parts.
The deal for Microsoft was that MS-DOS would be licensed
to IBM by Microsoft for a one-time fee of $50,000, but there was a catch: Microsoft
never mentioned to IBM that their deal was non-exclusive. Soon Microsoft was
selling MS-DOS to all of IBM's competitors, taking a licensing fee from every
computer sold. This licensing deal has been called the greatest deal in
history. It made Bill Gates a billionaire.
Gary's failure to not be there at the right time is
conversely called one of the biggest business failures in history. Once the
sales of the IBM PC took off, Gary had realized what he had lost. For a rare
moment, he would shed off his kind nature and threatened to sue IBM. In a
settlement, IBM agreed to offer CP/M alongside MS-DOS with every PC sold. Gary
Kildall was pleased. People could now choose for themselves which software they
liked best. Justice had finally been served. There was only just one problem,
though. When both software packages were released, MS-DOS sold for $40 and
CP/M, $240. This was a complete disaster for almost identical pieces of
software. For this reason, Gary's CP/M software would fade into obscurity by
the late 1980s. Gary had lost to a clone of his own creation.
Sadly, he didn't take it well. He was so crushed by the events
that he didn't ever bother suing Microsoft or IBM again. The strain from
missing out on the greatest opportunity of many lifetimes would eventually
cause Dorothy to divorce Gary. He would also shy away from his show, The
Computer Chronicles. The ubiquity of personal computers in the following years
meant that Gary would forever be reminded of his failure everywhere he turned. Kildall
would slip into a bout of depression and alcoholism.
Sadly, in 1994, Gary would die from head injuries in a
fistfight at a biker bar.
Today, Gary, the man who invented the operating system for
personal computers, is only a faint footnote in technology history. So I think
that it's important that we keep his contribution to the evolution of computing
alive. I can see that it was just a series of unfortunate events for Gary, but
if we can take any lessons away from them, it might be, make the most of every
opportunity.
That's the end of that story. It's pretty sad note, but I
thought I'd just share it with you because it's pretty unknown, I think. A lot
of people don't know about Gary Kildall and what he did.