How A Single Day Changed Office IT Solutions Forever

The beauty of IT solutions is that the best and most popular pieces of software put a lot of work into making everything straightforward for the end user in a way that is so unobtrusive that many members of staff do not even think about it.

A lot of this is down to the vast majority of computers running on the same operating system, with Microsoft Windows almost always being used to bridge the gap between the person sitting at their desk and computer components allowing them to complete everything they need to.

Microsoft Windows has been around for nearly four decades, and for three of those it has been the almost-ubiquitous system of choice for desktop and laptop computers, with the only major alternatives being Apple macOS for some creative industries and either iOS or Android for use with enterprise smartphones.

This was not always set to be the case, however, and in one of the ultimate cases of the butterfly effect in the world of IT, a single flight on a single day may have changed the course of history forever.

The Pioneer Of The PC Revolution

One of the most important figures in the history of business computing was Gary Kildall, a computer scientist who was amongst the first people to realise the potential for microprocessors and conceived of the personal computer as we know it today.

When he received his degree in 1972, microprocessors were primarily seen as equipment controllers for electronics such as microwaves, but Mr Kildall believed that they could be used as computers in their own right and developed programming languages and software to highlight their potential.

The biggest, most successful and most forward-thinking of these was CP/M, which stood both for Control Program/Monitor and Control Program for Microcomputers. This was the first operating system and is now all but mandatory to run a computer in the present day.

He also found a way to make it largely platform-independent through the concept of a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), which allowed CP/M to be easily implemented on thousands of different computer models.

The success of CP/M was something of a surprise for Mr Kildall, and his company Intergalactic Digital Research (later shortened to just Digital Research Inc) worked tirelessly to update and increase compatibility as it became the effective standard for business computing in the late 1970s. It seemed wholly plausible that this would continue into the next decade as well.

However, one fateful day, the details of which are still shrouded in mystery, everything changed although what is known is somewhat different from the myth that is told.

A Flight Of Fancy

There are multiple versions of the story of Digital Research and IBM, but the most comprehensive comes from a 1995 episode of Computer Chronicles, a public access television show that Mr Kildall co-hosted for several years.

The commonly told story of this day in 1980, most often repeated by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, was that on the day of the meeting, Gary Kildall had gone on a recreational flight, which meant that he could not sign the contract to port CP/M to the IBM PC and missed out on making history.

The actual story is far more complex than this and has a few details that are still the subject of fierce debate.

In 1980, at the suggestion of Bill Gates, IBM planned to license the use of CP/M for their next business machine, the IBM PC, which used an Intel 8088 processor compatible with the 8086 system that a forthcoming version of CP/M was being designed for.

On the morning in question, Mr Kildall was allegedly out on a flight, but rather than a recreational one, it was a business trip to deliver software and documentation to Godbout Electronics. 

During that time, a representative from IBM showed up and was greeted by Mr Kildall’s wife Dorothy, the co-founder of digital research who typically managed the initial negotiations with manufacturers and clients.

According to most accounts, Mrs Kildall read the documentation with DRI’s legal advisor Gerry Davis and refused to sign it until Gary had a chance to make a decision. 

According to some accounts, Mr Kildall did meet with an IBM representative and signed the agreement, but the lead negotiator at IBM Jack Sams claimed that the two never met, something corroborated at the time. Whatever the case, negotiations fell through.

Exactly why has never truly been ascertained and might possibly never be known. One belief is that Mrs Kildall and Mr Davis were worried about the nature of the agreement, which was a one-time payment of $250,000 that gave IBM effective ownership of the proposed CP/M-86.

Another claim is that she could not give complete assurances that it could be made within IBM’s strict deadlines, with the small company already committed to other work.

It is even possible that IBM simply became sick of waiting and saw the lack of availability of Mr Kildall as a sign of disrespect or unprofessionalism.

Whatever the case, Jack Sams flew to Seattle to negotiate with Bill Gates, who had suggested Mr Kildall to begin with and was already working on a version of BASIC for the IBM PC, noting that Mr Kildall had apparently gone flying rather than negotiate a major deal.

Mr Gates found an alternative in 86-DOS, also known as QDOS (the Q allegedly standing for “quick and dirty”), which Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen negotiated with Seattle Computer Products for the rights, leading to the creation of IBM PC DOS.

The problem was that pretty much every part of the deal was illegal; PC DOS had copied elements from CP/M and threatened to sue, and Microsoft had lied about their deal with IBM to get the rights to 86-DOS for just $50,000, which later led to a legal settlement.

IBM agreed to sell the IBM PC without an operating system and let people choose between PC DOS (later MS-DOS) and CP/M. The problem was that Microsoft’s MS-DOS was being sold for a sixth of the price of CP/M, and when the IBM PC became the standard computer for business, MS-DOS became the standard operating system.

History would later repeat itself with Microsoft Windows, which supplanted Gary Kildall’s GEM and IBM’s TopView as the graphical operating system of choice, and the PC to this day still relies on a processor compatible with the 8086 and a copy of Microsoft Windows.

Whilst Gary Kildall would continue to be successful in the computer business and retire a multi-millionaire after selling GEM and DRI in 1991, he became extremely bitter regarding IBM and Microsoft, not helped by how it affected his reputation in the computer world, something that would remain until his untimely death in 1994.