MS DOS Is Born

MS DOS Is Born

MS DOS was the operating system for the first IBM PC. Its beginning was somewhat unique. I retired from IBM after 42 years and this is the way it was...more or less.

An IBM team flew to Washington state to ask a young programmer to develop an operating system. He informed the IBM team that he did not do operating systems, he was a BASIC programmer. Their next stop was San Jose, CA. They went to talk with the developed of the C+ programming language. He was not in but they spoke with his lawyer, the vice president of the company, and coincidentally, his wife. She told them he had a brand new airplane and was out flying and she didn't know when he would be back. They couldn't wait, so they went back to Washington.

Upon their arrival, they told the young programmer they still needed an operating system whereupon he told them again "I do not do operating systems". In the typical friendly manner (Tongue firmly inserted in cheek here.), they said if you want to do business with IBM, you will provide us with an operating system.
Bill Gates then went over to Seattle and negotiated and purchased an operating system, called DR DOS. This ultimately became Microsoft Disk Operating System or more popularly MS DOS.

Gates and his Microsoft team frequently flew to Boca Raton, Fl where the IBM PC was manufactured. As was typical with programmers of the time, they were a scruffy looking, bearded guys that ill fit the IBM image. They would sprawl in the lobby with pizza boxes scattered around while the blue suits fretted.

As Microsoft grew, the relationship with IBM became strained. Microsoft was do develop an operating system for IBM called OS2. The initial package came out and by the second or third revision was in pretty good shape. I was using the system as a beta tester and was very happy with it. It seemed much more stable than MS Windows 2.0. At any rate, the partnership was broken. In my opinion it fell apart because IBM felt Microsoft was devoting more of its time and resources to Windows and less to OS2. IBM continued working on OS2 and it became quite a stable operating system. The word in my circle of associates was OS2 would be marketed as Windows 3.2. It never happened. Windows went from version 3.1 to the now famous Windows 95 and the rest is history.

Bill Gates" mother was on the board of directors of United Way Charities as was John Opel, CEO of IBM. Mrs. Gates asked Mr. Opel, "What are you people doing to my boy, Billy?"

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