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During a time of drastic change in the world of technology, a story of triumph and lost opportunities, and a mysterious death after a fight at a Monterey bar. Fifty years ago, in Pacific Grove, in the tool shed of a house on Bayview, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School named Gary Kildall wrote the software that ignited the personal computer revolution. “Gary made it possible for anybody's program to run on anyone's computer,” said Tom Rolander, Kildall’s best friend and right-hand man. In 1974, Kildall created CPM (Control Program for Microcomputers) and started Digital Research Incorporated, or DRI...

Computer Chronicles was a show on PBS back in the 1980s. This episode features, among others, an interview of Gary Kildall, the inventor of CP/M, an 8-bit operating system which preceded QDOS and MS-DOS, both of which were based on CP/M. Kildall was the founder of Digital Research Inc. (DRI).

Suit may revise chapter on tech history: Origins of MS-DOS Software's creator disputes book's description of it being a 'rip-off' A decades-old quarrel over a defining event in computer history -- the creation of the program that propelled Microsoft to dominance -- has suddenly become a legal dispute that could lead to a public trial. Tim Paterson, the programmer widely credited for the software that became Microsoft's landmark operating system, MS-DOS, filed a defamation suit this week against prominent historian and author Harold Evans and the publishers of his book, "They Made America," released last year. At issue is...

BusinessWeek Online The Man Who Could Have Been Bill Gates Friday October 15, 3:58 pm ET By Steve Hamm in New York and Jay Greene in Seattle The saga of the computing industry is rich with outsize characters and surprising plot turns, but there's one story that has risen over time to mythic proportions. It's the tale of how software pioneer Gary Kildall missed out on the opportunity to supply IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) with the operating system for its first PC -- essentially handing the chance of a lifetime, and control of tech's future, to rival Bill Gates and...