Bill Gates

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classes for students. "I surreptitiously added a few instructions and found myself nearly the only guy in a class full of girls"(Gates 12).
In 1972 Intel released their first microprocessor chip: the 8008. Gates attempted to write a version of BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) for the new Intel chip, but the chip did not contain enough transistors to handle it. Gates and Allen found a way to use the 8008 and "started Traf-O-Data, a computer traffic analysis company"(Clayton 452) It worked well however, marketing their new machine proved to be impossible. "No one actually wanted to buy the machine, at least not from a couple teenagers"(Gates 14). Gates and Allen had more less successful endeavors in starting a software company. In 1974 Intel announced their new chip: the 8080. The two college students sent off letters "to all the big computer companies, offering to write them a version of BASIC for the new Intel chip. We got no takers"(Gates 15).
While ...

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personal computer in less than a year. "IBM had elected to build its PC mainly from off-the-shelf components available to anyone. This made a platform that was fundamentally open, which made it easy to copy"(Gates 47). IBM bought the microprocessors from Intel and licensed the operating system from Microsoft. Microsoft bought some work from another company in Seattle and hired its top engineer, Tim Paterson. The system became known as the Microsoft Disk Operating System, or MS-DOS.

Now because of the licensing agreement between IBM and Microsoft, IBM had no control over Microsoft's distribution of its MS-DOS to other companies who wanted to clone the IBM machine. This decision by IBM is ...

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