FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF THE DIGITAL AGE
FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF THE DIGITAL AGE
How Gary Kildall and Xerox PARC Helped Build the Technology Microsoft and Apple Became Famous For
The history of personal computing is often reduced to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Microsoft, and Apple. That version leaves out the people whose work created many of the foundations those companies later commercialized.
Two of the most important examples are Gary Kildall's CP/M operating system and the groundbreaking graphical-computing research conducted at Xerox PARC.
The story is not that Microsoft and Apple contributed nothing. They did. Their enormous success came from taking existing technologies, adapting them, improving them, commercializing them, and ultimately controlling the markets built around them.
The problem is when commercialization gets rewritten as invention.
GARY KILDALL AND CP/M
In 1974, computer scientist Gary Kildall created CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers). It became one of the most important operating systems of the early microcomputer era.
Kildall's major contribution was not simply writing an operating system. He developed an approach that allowed CP/M to be adapted to different computer hardware. Its hardware-dependent BIOS could be separated from the rest of the operating system, making the software portable across machines.
By the late 1970s, CP/M had become a major industry standard.
CP/M was used by numerous computer manufacturers.
Software developers wrote programs specifically for the CP/M environment.
Its commands, file conventions, and programmer interfaces became widely recognized.
It established many of the conventions that users would later encounter in DOS.
When IBM began developing the IBM PC, CP/M was the operating system IBM wanted.
That relationship fell apart during IBM's negotiations with Digital Research, Kildall's company.
Microsoft then saw an opportunity.
WHERE DOS CAME FROM
Microsoft needed an operating system for IBM's new computer. Instead of creating an operating system entirely from scratch, Microsoft acquired 86-DOS, originally developed by Tim Paterson at Seattle Computer Products.
The important part of the story is 86-DOS's relationship with CP/M.
Paterson used Digital Research's CP/M Interface Guide and other CP/M information while developing QDOS, which became 86-DOS. The resulting system deliberately reproduced much of the CP/M environment, including familiar commands and programmer-visible conventions.
That does not mean 86-DOS was simply a line-for-line copy of CP/M. But it does mean the history is misleading when DOS is presented as an entirely independent invention. Gary Kildall believed his work had been improperly appropriated and considered legal action.
Microsoft acquired 86-DOS, adapted it for IBM, and turned it into PC-DOS and MS-DOS.
The real breakthrough came from Microsoft's business strategy.
THE BUSINESS MOVE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
IBM helped establish the PC hardware standard, but Microsoft retained the ability to license DOS beyond IBM. That meant Microsoft could sell the operating system to other manufacturers producing IBM-compatible computers. The result was enormous obviously.
IBM established the PC architecture.
Microsoft established the dominant software platform.
Other manufacturers could build compatible computers.
Microsoft could license DOS across that growing market.
The operating system became more valuable as the number of compatible computers increased. That was one of Microsoft's greatest business achievements. But the foundations did not originate with Microsoft.
THE PRICE OF CP/M
Digital Research faced another enormous problem: price.
IBM offered both PC-DOS and CP/M-86, but the difference was dramatic.
PC-DOS: approximately $40
CP/M-86: approximately $240
A six-times-higher price placed CP/M at a severe disadvantage. Microsoft's cheaper DOS quickly became the practical choice for the IBM PC market, while Digital Research's position weakened. Kildall had helped create the operating-system environment that made the early PC software industry possible. Microsoft ultimately captured the market surrounding it.
XEROX PARC AND THE GRAPHICAL REVOLUTION
The same pattern appears in the history of graphical computing. Steve Jobs and Apple are frequently credited with inventing the graphical user interface. They did not.
During the 1970s, researchers at Xerox PARC were already developing revolutionary graphical-computing systems. The Xerox Alto incorporated concepts that would later become fundamental to personal computing:
Graphical windows
Icons
Menus
Mouse-based interaction
Bitmap graphics
Networking
Object-oriented programming
Graphical document editing
This is what became the GUI (Graphic user Interface) now often just called a UI in a more generalized sense and expression. Researchers such as Adele Goldberg, Alan Kay, and Dan Ingalls helped develop this environment. The GUI did not suddenly appear when Apple released the Macintosh. It had already been the subject of years of research.
APPLE AND XEROX PARC
Apple gained access to Xerox's research through a relationship between the two companies. Apple engineers visited Xerox PARC and saw the Alto and its graphical environment. Steve Jobs later saw the technology as well. The influence was substantial.
Apple went on to develop the Lisa and Macintosh, bringing graphical computing to a much larger consumer audience. To be fair, Apple deserves enormous credit for doing that. But there is a difference between commercializing a technology and inventing its underlying concepts. Apple took ideas developed at PARC and elsewhere and transformed them into consumer products. That was an important achievement. It simply was not the beginning of graphical computing.
MICROSOFT AND WINDOWS
Not being as original as it is often presented as being, Microsoft followed the same technological direction. Microsoft announced Windows in 1983, and Windows 1.0 was released in 1985. Windows brought graphical computing into the rapidly expanding IBM-compatible PC market. Its environment included:
Windows
Pull-down menus
Mouse support
Graphical applications
A visual desktop environment
Microsoft did not invent the graphical user interface. Instead, Microsoft entered an already-developed technological field and eventually became its dominant commercial force.
INVENTION AND COMMERCIALIZATION ARE NOT THE SAME THING
This is the distinction that gets lost in the popular version of PC and general digital and software history. A technology can pass through several different stages:
Invention — someone develops the underlying concept.
Development — engineers turn the concept into a practical system.
Adaptation — another company modifies it for a different platform or audience.
Commercialization — a company turns it into a mass-market product.
Standardization — the product becomes widely adopted.
Market dominance — the company becomes associated with the technology.
Those stages do not necessarily belong to the same person or company.
That is exactly what happened with the PC revolution.
THE PEOPLE WHO BUILT THE FOUNDATION
Gary Kildall created CP/M and established a major foundation for microcomputer operating systems. Tim Paterson created 86-DOS while deliberately using CP/M's documented interface and conventions as a guide.
Microsoft acquired 86-DOS and transformed it into the DOS platform that dominated the IBM-compatible PC industry.
Xerox PARC researchers developed foundational graphical-computing technology.
Apple adapted those ideas into the Lisa and Macintosh and helped make graphical computing commercially desirable.
Microsoft then developed Windows and eventually dominated the graphical PC market.
The companies that won the market became the names everyone remembers. The people who built much of the foundation became footnotes.
THE REAL LESSON OF THE PC AND DIGITAL REVOLUTION
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were extraordinarily successful entrepreneurs if not entirely honest. Microsoft and Apple made major contributions to the development of personal computing. But neither company or founders created its most important technologies in a vacuum.
The PC revolution was built on decades of work by researchers, engineers, and programmers whose names became less famous as larger corporations took their ideas into the mass market.
Gary Kildall's CP/M helped establish the operating-system foundation.
Xerox PARC helped establish the graphical-computing foundation.
Microsoft and Apple became dominant by turning technological foundations into products, platforms, and enormous commercial ecosystems.
That distinction matters.
The reality is the company that wins the market is not necessarily the company that invented the technology.
And the history of personal computing should remember the people who built the foundations, not just the companies that eventually became famous for building on them (or hijacking them).
In 1993, the year before his untimely death, Gary wrote a draft of a memoir titled Computer Connections: People, Places, and Events in the Evolution of the Personal Computer Industry. He distributed bound copies to family and friends, with a note that it “will go to print in final form early next year.” It never did.
