Gary Kildall
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| Gary Kildall | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 19, 1942 Seattle, Washington |
Gary Arlen Kildall (May 19, 1942 – July 11, 1994) was an early American microcomputer entrepreneur who created the CP/M operating system and founded Digital Research, Inc.
Kildall was one of the first people to see microprocessors as fully capable computers rather than equipment controllers and to organize a company around this concept.<ref name="chronicles">"Special Edition: Gary Kildall." The Computer Chronicles. 1995. [1]</ref> His career includes a number of technological "firsts." Although he is mainly remembered in connection with the 1980 events that led to CP/M's decline and the rise of Microsoft, his career in computing spanned more than two decades.
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[edit] Early life
Gary Kildall was born and grew up in Seattle, Washington, where his family operated a seafaring school. Gary attended the University of Washington hoping to become a mathematics teacher, but became increasingly interested in computer technology. After receiving his degree, he fulfilled a draft obligation to the United States Navy by teaching at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.<ref name="swaine">Swaine, Michael (2001-06-22). "Gary Kildall and Collegial Entrepreneurship". Dr. Dobb's Journal. Retrieved on 2006-11-20.</ref>
Being within a few hours' drive of Silicon Valley, Kildall heard about the first microprocessor, the Intel 4004. He bought one of the processors and began writing experimental programs for it. As he grew increasingly interested in the technology, he went to work at Intel as a consultant on his days off. Intel lent him systems using the 8008 and 8080 processors, and in 1973 he developed the first high-level programming language for microprocessors, called PL/M.<ref name="swaine"/>
Kildall briefly returned to UW and finished his doctorate in computer science in 1972, then returned to NPS. He published a paper that introduced the theory of data-flow analysis used today in optimizing compilers<ref>Kildall, Gary (1973). "A Unified Approach to Global Program Optimization". Proceedings of the 1st Annual ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages. Retrieved on 2006-11-20.</ref> and continued to experiment with microcomputers, especially the emerging technology of floppy disks. He created CP/M in 1973 to enable the 8080 to control a floppy drive, combining for the first time all the essential components of a computer at the microcomputer scale. He tried to sell CP/M to Intel, but Intel had little interest and licensed PL/M instead.<ref name="swaine"/>
[edit] Business career
[edit] CP/M
To commercialize CP/M, Kildall and his wife Dorothy established a company, originally called "Intergalactic Digital Research," that sold through advertisements in hobbyist magazines. Digital Research licensed CP/M for the IMSAI 8080, a popular clone of the Altair 8800. As more manufacturers licensed CP/M, it became a de facto standard and had to support an increasing number of hardware variations. In response Kildall pioneered the concept of a BIOS, a set of simple programs stored in the computer hardware that enabled CP/M to run on different systems without modification.<ref name="swaine"/>
CP/M's quick success took Kildall by surprise, and he was slow to update it for high density floppy disks and hard disks. After hardware manufacturers talked about creating a rival operating system, Kildall started a rush project to develop CP/M 2.<ref name="eubanksrecollections">Recollections of Gary Kildall (Gordon Eubanks). Retrieved on 2006-11-30.</ref> By 1981, at the peak of its popularity, CP/M ran on 3000 different computer models and DRI had $5.4 million in yearly revenues.<ref name="swaine"/>
[edit] IBM dealings
IBM approached Digital Research in 1980, at Bill Gates's suggestion, to license CP/M for its upcoming IBM PC. Gary knew about the meeting,<ref name="harddrive">Wallace, James, and Jim Erickson (1993). Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire. ISBN 0887306292.</ref> but he missed the first part because he and colleague Tom Rolander were using Kildall's private plane to deliver software in person to manufacturer Bill Godbout. Instead the IBM representatives met with Dorothy, who managed the company's business affairs. She hesitated to sign IBM's complex non-disclosure agreement, which the IBM representatives required before revealing any details of the project. Kildall returned in the afternoon and approved the non-disclosure agreement so negotiations could go forward; he did not personally meet with the IBM representatives that day. Kildall claimed that the following day the IBM representatives took the same return flight to Florida that he and Dorothy took for their vacation, and that they negotiated further on the flight, reaching a handshake agreement. IBM's lead negotiator Jack Sams insisted that he never met Gary, either at DRI or on his departing flight, although he accepted that someone else in his group might have.<ref name="harddrive"/>
Jack Sams related the story to Gates, who had already agreed to provide a BASIC interpreter and several other programs for the PC. Describing the events in later years, Gates would claim that Kildall capriciously "went flying." He worried that IBM executives would stop the project, so he suggested that IBM use the CP/M clone QDOS from Seattle Computer Products. Paul Allen negotiated a licensing deal with SCP, had QDOS adapted for IBM's hardware, and IBM shipped it as PC-DOS.<ref name="fireinthevalley">Freiberger, Paul, and Michael Swaine [1984] (2000). Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer, 2nd edition, New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-135892-7.</ref>
Kildall obtained a copy of PC-DOS, examined it, and concluded that it was a rip-off of CP/M. He took this information to DRI legal counsel Gerry Davis, but Davis told him that intellectual property law for software was not clear enough to pursue legal action (Davis now says that under current case law, he would have sued).<ref name="hamm">Hamm, Steve, and Jay Greene (2004-10-25). "The Man Who Could Have Been Bill Gates". BusinessWeek. Retrieved on 2006-11-13.</ref> Instead Kildall confronted IBM with the threat of legal action, and IBM agreed to offer CP/M-86 as an option for the PC in return for a release of liability.<ref name="eubankshistory"/> When the IBM PC was introduced, IBM sold the operating system as an unbundled (but necessary) option. One of the operating system options was PC-DOS, priced at US$40. A new port of CP/M, called CP/M-86, was offered a few months later and priced at $240, but sold poorly against DOS.<ref name="chronicles"/>
[edit] Later work
With the loss of the IBM deal, Gary and Dorothy found themselves under pressure to bring in more experienced management, and Gary's influence over the company waned. He worked in various experimental and research projects, such as a version of CP/M with multitasking and an implementation of the Logo programming language.<ref name="swaine"/> He hoped that Logo, an educational dialect of LISP, would supplant BASIC in education, but this did not happen.<ref name="eulogy">Rolander, Tom (1994-07-15). Eulogy. Tom Rolander's Website and Album. Retrieved on 2006-11-30.</ref> After seeing a demonstration of the Apple Lisa, Kildall oversaw the creation of DRI's own graphical user interface, called GEM Desktop. In 1983 he started hosting a public television program on the side, called Computer Chronicles, that followed trends in personal computing.
Novell acquired DRI in 1991 in a deal that netted millions for Kildall. He started a new company, KnowledgeSet, which adapted optical disk technology for computer use and produced the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia.<ref name="fireinthevalley"/>
[edit] Personal life
Kildall's colleagues recall him as creative, easygoing, and adventurous. In addition to flying, he loved sports cars, auto racing, and boating. He had a lifelong love of the sea. With his profits from the Novell acquisition he purchased a lakeside ranch in Austin, Texas and maintained an oceanside house in California. In Austin he did volunteer work to assist children with AIDS.<ref name="swaine"/>
They also note that Kildall's interest was primarily in inventing and writing programs that mattered to him, and not in building an industry or a large company.<ref name="chronicles"/><ref name="eubankshistory">Eubanks, Gordon. Interview with Daniel S. Morrow. "Gordon Eubanks Oral History (Computerworld Honors Program International Archives).", Cupertino, CA. 200-11-08.
</ref> Although he preferred to leave the IBM affair in the past and to be known for his work before and afterward, he continually faced comparisons between himself and Bill Gates and fading memories of his contributions. A legend grew around the fateful IBM-DRI meeting, suggesting that he had irresponsibly taken the day off for a recreational flight, and he found himself having to refute these stories.<ref name="harddrive"/><ref name="fireinthevalley"/> In later years he had occasional private outbursts of bitterness over being upstaged by Microsoft.<ref name="swaine"/>
Kildall was particularly annoyed when the University of Washington asked him, as a distinguished graduate, to attend their computer science program anniversary in 1992, but gave the keynote speech to college dropout Gates. In response he started writing his memoir, Computer Connections.<ref name="hamm"/> The unpublished memoir expressed his frustration that people did not seem to value elegance in software,<ref name="eulogy"/> and it said of Gates, "He is divisive. He is manipulative. He is a user. He has taken much from me and the industry." In an appendix he called DOS "plain and simple theft" because its first 26 system calls worked the same as CP/M's.<ref name="gatesshadow">Andrews, Paul. "A Career Spent in Gates' Shadow—Computer Pioneer Dies at 52", Seattle Times, 1994-07-14.</ref> Harold Evans used the memoir as a source for a chapter about Kildall in the 2004 book They Made America, concluding that Microsoft had robbed Kildall of his inventions.<ref>Evans, Harold, Gail Buckland, and David Lefer (2004). They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovators from the Steam Engine to the Search Engine. Little, Brown and Co.. ISBN 0316277665.</ref> IBM veterans from the PC project disputed the book's description of events, and Microsoft described it as "one-sided and inaccurate."<ref name="hamm"/>
[edit] Death
On July 8, 1994, Kildall sustained an injury at a Monterey restaurant and refused treatment. The circumstances of the injury remain unclear, with various sources claiming he fell from a chair, fell down steps, or was assaulted. He died three days later at the Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula, and the coroner's report identified the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head consistent with a fall. There was also evidence that he had experienced a heart attack, but an autopsy did not conclusively determine the cause of death.<ref name="gatesshadow"/><ref>Markoff, John. "Gary Kildall, 52, Crucial Player In Computer Development, Dies", New York Times, 1994-07-13, p. D19.</ref><ref>Kirkpatrick, Don (1999-01-12). comp.os.cpm Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Retrieved on 2006-11-20.</ref> He was buried in Evergreen-Washelli Cemetery in North Seattle.
[edit] Recognition
In March 1995, Kildall was posthumously honored by the Software Publishers Association (now the Software and Information Industry Association) for his contributions to the microcomputer industry:<ref name="swaine"/>
- Introduction of operating systems with preemptive multitasking and windowing capabilities and menu-driven user interfaces.
- Creation of the first diskette track buffering schemes, read-ahead algorithms, file directory caches, and RAM disk emulators.
- Introduction of a binary recompiler in the 1980s.
- The first programming language and first compiler specifically for microprocessors.
- The first microprocessor disk operating system, which eventually sold a quarter million copies.
- The first computer interface for video disks to allow automatic nonlinear playback, presaging today's interactive multimedia.
- The file system and data structures for the first consumer CD-ROM.
- The first successful open system architecture by segregating system-specific hardware interfaces in a set of BIOS routines, making the whole third-party software industry possible.
At the time of Kildall's death, Bill Gates commented that he was "one of the original pioneers of the PC revolution" and "a very creative computer scientist who did excellent work."<ref name="chronicles"/>
[edit] Footnotes
<references/>
[edit] External links
- Digital Research tribute to Dr. Kildall
- "Kildall, Industry Pioneer" in Microprocessor Report vol 8, no. 10, August 1, 1994 (pdf format)
- Internet archive of defunct Digital Research website
- The Gary Kildall Legacy by Sol Libesde:Gary Kildall
es:Gary Kildall fr:Gary Kildall ko:게리 킬달 nl:Gary Kildall ja:ゲイリー・キルドール pt:Gary Kildall
