PC software pioneer Gary Kildall's life and mysterious death at a Monterey bar
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 CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) and started Digital Research Incorporated, or DRI to market the software. It would go on to become the first commercially successful computer operating system way before Windows. Kildall also developed the first successful basic input/output system or BIOS, the foundation for the personal computer as we now know it. Rolander was employee number 1 at Digital Research.
“He did everything,” Rolander said while talking with KSBW’s Paul Dudley. “He designed the data structures, wrote the code, debugged it, and also wrote the documentation.”
Digital Research would expand from the tool shed on Bayview to a Victorian on Lighthouse Ave and later to other buildings in Pacific Grove and Monterey including a large office on Garden Road. In 1978, the company was making $100,000 a month. By 1983, revenues hit nearly $45 million a year.
Kildall hired rock and roll photographer Tom Gundelfinger O'Neal to work for him. The man known for shooting pictures of Joni Mitchell, BB King, and many others suddenly learned the world of computer science.
“They should definitely remember him as the guy that started it all,” O’Neal said. “He wrote the first operating system for the personal computer, and no matter what, there is no way to negate that. Gary was someone the world needed.”
The good times wouldn’t last forever. When IBM decided to create a personal computer, they first went to Bill Gates, but Gates didn't have an operating system yet, so he recommended Kildall, but that’s when things started to fall apart.
“Gary kind of got a bum rap in a way because what really happened, you never hear about,” O’Neal said.
The story goes that IBM flew to Pacific Grove to meet with Kildall, but rather than take the meeting, he went flying, a move that upset executives at IBM and would alter computer history forever. The story, though, is not quite as sensational as it sounds.
“Gary was coming back from a meeting and he's flying his own plane. And when IBM, when those guys heard it, they interpreted it as ‘he's out flying his plane, he's too busy to be with us right now," O'Neal said.
IBM went back to Gates, who would buy his own operating system from Seattle Computer Products. When asked about the IBM contract, Gates was quoted in the London Times as saying; "Gary was out flying when IBM came to visit, and that's why they did not get the contract." To make matters worse, Rolander says the operating system Gates bought copied CPM.
“43 of the 45 functions were copied directly from CPM,” Rolander said. “So, we let IBM know that we're in the process of suing Seattle Computer Products, and IBM said, "Wait a minute, wait, okay, let's not rush into this.”
Eventually, an agreement was made. IBM would offer multiple versions of the operating software and let customers decide, but a surprising price difference proved to be the beginning of the end for Digital Research. IBM priced Gate’s PC Dos at $40 and CPM at $240.
“I really think the only reason they priced our software higher was they clearly did not want it to succeed. They did not want another operating system out there diluting the market. They wanted the PC Dos to be the dominant operating system. And what better way to do that than to price one at $40 and the other at $240,” said Rolander.
"What was your reaction at that point? asked Dudley. “It was like somebody had walked up to me and slapped me across the face. I mean, Gary and I had the same reaction to this. I would describe it as the end of innocence for both of us and for the industry as a whole,” said Rolander.
Kildall would still go on to have a successful career, selling digital research to Novell for $120 million. In 1991, he also formed another company which put the first encyclopedia on a CD-ROM and co-host the show Computer Chronicles on PBS with Stewart Cheifet until 1990 but Rolander says his friend was always haunted by the story of “the day he went flying” and the notion that he should have been Bill Gates.
“What would happen is every time a reporter, anybody from the media, would talk with Gary, they would ask him, so what happened? Why didn't you get the IBM contract? You could have been Bill Gates and Gary would hear that over and over and over again. And that would be very hard, very hard to live with,” said Rolander.
Several years after the IBM contract wars, Microsoft settled with the U.S. Justice Department over the way the company marketed its operating system in the 1980s. We reached out to Microsoft. They said they were unable to comment. IBM wouldn’t comment, either.
Kildall was described as a bright, happy and inquisitive person but by 1994, friends say he had withdrawn from many of the things that made him happiest and was still haunted by the IBM contract wars.
“He withdrew from a lot of friends that he had. It was very challenging for me. I had been the best man at his wedding. He’d been the best man of mine and he had retreated from that,” said Rolander.
In July of 1994, Kildall was at the Franklin Street Bar and Grill, now the Crown and Anchor. Monterey Police say there was a fight. Kildall was knocked down. He refused medical treatment that night but would be discharged from the hospital twice before dying at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula a few days after the fight.
“The night he took a fall - or was pushed — we are still not sure — Monterey Police did look for homicide,” said Steve Hauk, a local gallery owner, writer, and friend of Kildall. “There has never been, to my knowledge, a witness that has come forward and said what really happened.”
Monterey police say the death may have been “foul play” and investigated it as a homicide. No one was ever charged.
“A lot of people have asked me and wanted to probe about what happened with Gary, what was his passing, what happened with that. And as Gary's close personal friend, I'm really uncomfortable discussing that," Rolander said.
Hauk believes the death should not be sanitized. He co-wrote a play with Cheifet about Kildall’s life and death called "The Forgotten Computer Genius”. Hauk says Kildall was as tragic of a figure in the classical sense as he can think of.
“He creates something that's for the good of mankind. It's coveted and taken by others. The pain is so great, he is destroyed. And basically, that's what happened to him,” said Hauk. “He was absolutely brilliant. Who knows what he would have discovered and done if he had lived another 20, 30 years.”
These days — 50 years since CPM and nearly 30 since his death — Gary Kildall’s name may not be as recognizable as Bill Gates’ but nevertheless he is remembered. At the Computer Science Museum in Mountain View. In Monterey, a conference room at Naval Postgraduate School bears his name, too. In Pacific Grove--- his story is memorialized on the sidewalk outside the old Victorian, a small plaque paying tribute to a man who made big contributions to the advancement of the personal computer.
“Whenever I talk to people that come into town, I say, please go over to the corner, Willard Lighthouse, five blocks past the post office and take a look at that bronze plaque because that is Gary's legacy.”
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