Gary Kildall

Gary Kildall was a famous American computer scientist and entrepreneur.

He helped lead the way for the personal computer revolution. This means he made the tools that let small computers become useful for many people. He was born in Seattle, Washington, to a family that ran a school for seamanship. His father was a sea captain of Norwegian heritage. Kildall grew up to be a very smart student. He earned degrees in mathematics and computer science from the University of Washington. He even worked at the Naval Postgraduate School in California during his studies.

Kildall is best known for creating an operating system called CP/M. An operating system is a set of programs that manages a computer. In 1973, he and Kathryn Strutynski also developed a language called PL/M. This language helped them build CP/M for microprocessors. He also invented the BIOS, which stands for Basic Input Output System. The BIOS is a set of simple programs stored in the computer hardware. It acted like a bridge. This bridge allowed the CP/M system to talk to disk storage. It also let the software work on many different types of machines without needing changes.

Kildall started a company called Digital Research, Inc. to sell his software products.

He and his wife, Dorothy, used advertisements in magazines to find customers. In the 1970s, CP/M became a very popular standard for many computers. By 1981, the company was making millions of dollars every year. Kildall also worked on many other interesting projects. He helped create a graphical user interface called GEM in 1985. He also worked on a version of CP/M that could do many tasks at once, which is called multitasking. He even helped make the first computer encyclopedia on a CD-ROM.

There was a famous disagreement between Kildall and IBM in the 1980s. IBM wanted to buy a version of his software called CP/M-86 for their new PC. However, the two companies could not reach a deal. Some people say the meeting went poorly because of legal paperwork. Other stories say they could not agree on the price or the schedule. Instead of using Kildall's software, IBM used a system called PC DOS. This system was much cheaper for people to buy. Kildall later believed that PC DOS was too similar to his own work. He felt that his ideas had been used without permission.

Kildall stayed busy with technology for his whole life. He co-hosted a weekly television program called Computer Chronicles on PBS for seven years. This show helped people learn about the latest trends in computing. He also started a company called Activenture to work with optical discs. Later, he ran a business in Austin, Texas, called Prometheus Light and Sound. He wanted to connect land-line phones with mobile phones. Even though he faced hard times in the computer business, he always looked for elegant ways to write software. He remains a very important figure in the history of computers.