The Software Revolution Began With A Computer That Couldn’t Do Much

I turn 40 this month having spent half my life in one job, running Microsoft.

It was 20 years ago that Paul Allen and I founded the company, after writing the first adaptation of the BASIC computer language for a microprocessor.

It was also about 1975, give or take a couple of years, that the personal-computer revolution began.

It’s still under way, of course, led by companies that move full-speed to obsolete their own products and don’t take much time to look back. They recognize that tomorrow’s challenges are more interesting than yesterday’s successes.

Microsoft is no exception. We tend to celebrate new initiatives rather than past achievements.

But the 20-year milestone of the whole microcomputer industry seems a fitting time to reflect and celebrate. Microsoft has grown into a global company with 18,000 employees, and the PC industry has become one of the most important on earth.

I think the revolution began late in 1974 when Ed Roberts and his tiny Albuquerque, N.M., company, MITS, created an equally tiny computer called the Altair.

The Altair came as a kit and didn’t do much. Most people never got it to do more than blink lights on its front panel. But it was the computer that galvanized Paul and me, and a lot of other microcomputer pioneers, into action.

Some would argue that the revolution actually had its roots a few years earlier, when a scattering of individuals bought their own Digital Equipment minicomputers, called PDP-8s.

And others would probably say that the revolution didn’t begin until 1977, when the first really useful personal computers came to market. The best-remembered of the 1977 computers was the Apple II, developed by Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Mike Markkula. But equally important at the time were the Tandy TRS-80, championed by John Roach, and the Commodore PET, the brainchild of an incredible guy named Chuck Peddle.

Back in those good old days, we used to always talk about how the machines weren’t usable enough for a broad audience, and we were right.

But in the two decades since, PCs have become vastly easier to use and enormously more capable. Now roughly as many PCs as automobiles are sold in the United States. Around the world, 50 million a year sell.

I recently invited readers of this column to describe how PCs had affected their lives. Responses were enthusiastic and tended to come from people who were middle-aged or older. Young people grew up with PCs and perhaps aren’t as conscious of how different modern life would be without them.

I heard from a Canadian typing teacher pleased by how much more fun it is to teach youngsters to type on a computer than on a typewriter, and from a British doctor who wrote about the joys of a word processor that checks spelling and grammar: “Nobody now complains about my spelling and writing. Hurray!”

One woman wrote, “My husband takes the Long Island Rail Road to New York City. The LIRR is the largest, oldest, and probably most dreary commuter line in the U.S., but he blots out his two-hour train ride each way by writing fiction on his laptop.”

“My personal computer allows me to work at home and interact more often and more completely with my loved ones and my environment,” wrote Julia Neal, who lives on the Big Island of Hawaii. “It helps me to live and work where I want and to be the master of my own time.”

Helen Schwartz, who lives near my hometown of Seattle, is a middle-aged woman who was given a computer less than a year ago, and uses it to communicate with new-found friends. “I feared that computers would make us all anti-social,” she wrote. “But I was wrong. I am more social now than ever before. I really had no idea I would find this new world and life inside a little machine.”

Andy Lock, of Barcombe, England, marveled at how his 8-year-old uses a spreadsheet to chart statistics, and how electronic mail has enabled him to re-establish close contact with a friend in Brazil. “I used to write once in a blue moon and then half the time the letters went missing,” he said.

Braiden Kindt of Philadelphia pointed out the disadvantage of going overboard and losing balance.

“Once I had a life. Now I have a computer,” he wrote, while sitting at that very computer. “If it wasn’t for school I would never leave this room except to eat.”

Among the greatest fans of PCs are people who use them to overcome the isolating effects of disabilities of many kinds. “It gave my raging mind something to think about other than alcohol,” one man wrote.

Thomas Anderson, who was forced to convalesce for several months this year, discovered the freedom a PC gave him to communicate, explore information and even write a screenplay. “Having a PC has meant that the experience I have been through has been a lot less painful,” he wrote from Britain.

“The PC has literally given me a new lease on life,” wrote Cynthia McKee, a victim of post-polio muscle syndrome who was unable to continue her career in medical research but used a PC to begin a new career and write books.

“My PC allowed me to retain my dignity,” McKee wrote. “I may not be able to cook, do the laundry or vacuum my home - but, hey, who wants to do that, anyway? What I needed was to know that I was contributing to society.”

I love hearing about how computers have improved lives, two decades into the revolution.

The revolution is far from over. In fact the communications revolution is just beginning. As one of my readers put it: “As PCs improve and change, so does my company and my life.”

You can count on constant improvement, and constant change - for at least the next 20 years and probably longer.

The future is what matters, which is why I don’t look back too often. It’s just the way I am - even at the ripe old age of 40.

xxxx