Gary Kildall

according to Bill Gates

Gary Kildall was one of the original pioneers of the PC revolution. He was a very creative computer scientist who did excellent work. Although we were competitors, I always had tremendous respect for his contributions to the PC industry. His untimely death was very unfortunate and he and his work will be missed. Bill Gates, quoted in The Computer Chronicles, Special Edition: Gary Kildall (1995)

It’s fun to sit at a terminal and let the code flow. It sounds strange, but it just comes out my brain; once I’m started, I don’t have to think about it. Gary Killdall, Programmers at Work (1986)

But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? Matthew 12:48 KJV

CP/M and Digital Research Inc. (DRI) Web pages (retrotechnology.com) Many software and hardware companies of the 1980’s and beyond, began as one or two-person companies offering a CP/M-compatible program, or a 8080 or Z80-based hardware product or system. CP/M was the dominant operating system for the 8080 and Z80 based systems of the microcomputer market in the mid-1970’s through well into the 1980’s. Created by Dr. Gary Kildall before 1975 and sold quietly in that year as CP/M version 1.3 for $70 per disk, it became known as IMSAI’s first diskette operating system IMDOS in 1976. Gary Kildall and his wife formed Digital Research Inc. to sell and support the product. A popular release was CP/M 1.4 in 1978, and later as CP/M 2.0 and 2.2 in 1979. It was popular because it was cheap and non-proprietary, and because it included all the software tools and information necessary to move it to any hardware platform with a terminal and a floppy diskette controller. Proprietary or competing Z80/8080 operating systems of the time were often program-compatible with CP/M. Non-Z80 systems sometimes had a “Z80 card” in order to run CP/M.

Gary Kildall (Wikipedia) Gary Arlen Kildall (/ˈkɪldˌɔːl/; May 19, 1942 – July 11, 1994) was an American computer scientist and microcomputer entrepreneur. During the 1970s, Kildall created the CP/M operating system among other operating systems and programming tools, and subsequently founded Digital Research, Inc. to market and sell his software products.

Gary Kildall (en.wikiquote.org) Gary Kildall (May 19, 1942 – July 11, 1994) was an American computer scientist, founder of Digital Research, Inc. and creator of CP/M, the first standard operating system for personal computers.