PC.
Tim Patterson's operating system, which saved
the deal with IBM,
was, well, adapted from Gary Kildall's CPM.
So I took a CPM manual that I'd gotten from the
Retail Computer Store five dollars
in 1976 or something, and used that as the basis for
what would be the application program interface,
the API for my operating system.
And so using these ideas that came from different
places I started in April
and it was about half time for four months before I
had my first working version.
This is it, the operating system Tim Patterson wrote.
He called in QDOS the quick and dirty
operating system.
Microsoft and IBM called it PC DOS 1.0 and under
any name it looks an awful lot like CPM.
On this computer here I have running a PC DOS and
CPM 86
and frankly itНs very hard to tell the difference
between the two.
The command structures are the same,
so are the directories,
in fact the only obvious external difference is the
floppy dirive is labelled A in PC DOS
and and C in CPM.
Some difference and yet one generated billions in
revenue and the other disappeared.
As usual in the PC business the prize didn't go to
the inventor
but to the exploiter of the invention.
In this case that wasn't Gary Kildall, it wasn't even
Tim Paterson.
There was still one problem.
Tim Patterson worked for Seattle Computer
Products, or SCP.
They still owned the rights to QDOS,
rights that Microsoft had to have.
But then we went back and said to them look,
you know,
we want to buy this thing, and SCP was like most
little companies, you know.
They always needed cash and so that was when
they went in to the negotiation.
- And so ended up working out a deal to buy the
operating system from him
- for whatever usage we wanted for
fifty thousand dollars.
Hey, let's pause there.
To savour an historic moment.
- for whatever usage we wanted for
fifty thousand dollars.
It had to be the deal of the century if not
the millenium,
it was certainly the deal that made Bill Gates
and Paul Allen multi billionaires
and allowed Paul Allen to buy toys like these, his own
NBA basketball team and arena.
Microsoft bought outright for fifty thousand dollars
the operating system they needed
and they turned around and licensed it to the world
for up to fifty dollars per PC.
Think of it: one hundred million personal computers
running MS DOS software
funnelling billions into Microsoft - a company that
back then was
fifty kids managed by a twenty-five year old
who needed to wash his hair.
Nice work if you can get it and Microsoft got it.
There are no two places further apart in the USA
than south eastern Florida
and Washington State where Microsoft is based.
This - this is Florida,
Boca Raton and this building right here is where the
IBM PC was developed.
Here the nerds from Seattle joined forces
with the suits of corporate
and in that first honeymoon year they pulled off
a fantastic achievement.
- After we got a package in the mail from the people
down in Florida...
As August 1981 approached, the deadline for the
launch of the IBM Acorn,
the PC industry held its breath.
- Supposedly, maybe at this very moment eh,
- IBM is announcing the personal computer.
We don't know that yet.
In companies across America, software writers
like Dan Bricklin,
the creator of the first spreadsheet,
waited with their staff for the news of
the announcement.
This is a moment of PC history. IBM secrecy had
codenamed the PC 'The Floridian Project.'
Everyone in the PC business knew IBM would
change their world forever.
They also knew that if their software was
on the IBM PC,
they would make fortunes.
-...the attached information is not to be disclosed
prior to any public announcement.
- It's on the ticker
- It's on the ticker OK so now you can tell people.
What we're watching, are the first few seconds
of a $100 billion industry.
(promos) After years of thinking big today IBM
came up with something small...
..