TRIUMPH OF THE NERDS: EPISODE TWO: RIDING THE BEAR (TV)
Summary
The second of this three-part documentary film about the history of personal computing and the inventors and businessmen who made it possible, hosted by Robert Cringely. As the personal computer market exploded in the late 1970's, the first major corporation to take any real interest was IBM. Up until then, IBM was a manufacturer of large mainframe computers for big companies, but by 1980 they decided they wanted to break into the personal computer market. In August of 1979 IBM approached Bill Lowe, who ran a small IBM lab in Boca Raton, Florida, about creating a personal computer. He agreed to complete the task in a year's time. He accomplished this by assembling a PC out of already-existing components rather than building a computer from scratch; this process was known as "open architecture." Once the physical computer was completed, it still required a computer language to input commands and an operating system in order to manage the hardware functions. IBM wished to purchase an operating system and approached two candidates: Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Gary Kildall, inventor of the operating system CPM, who was known as someone who avoided "conflict" and was more interested in working on his projects than making money off of them. In 1980, IBM met with Gates at Microsoft to get them to license their operating system, but they soon learned that Microsoft was using CPM and had no legal right to license it. Gates redirected the IBM representatives to Kildall, who got into a legal discussion with them and decided to pass on their deal. Gates, seeing an opportunity to capitalize on Kildall's refusal, decided to provide IBM with an operating system. His partner Paul Allen purchased QDOS, the "Quick and Dirty Operating System" from a programmer named Tim Patterson, working for the small company Seattle Computer Products. QDOS was programmed as a slightly modified version of CPM, and Microsoft in turn renamed it PC-DOS 1.0 and licensed it to IBM. Neither Kildall nor Patterson saw any money from their work, as Microsoft was able to exploit the operating system for their own use. In August of 1981, IBM released the IBM PC, and software engineers everywhere tried to get IBM to put their software on the machine, knowing that they could make millions from royalties. IBM's machine, while not very much more advanced than its predecessors, was able to affect a mass-market appeal and sold over two million units in its first three years, aided by applications such as the spreadsheet Lotus 123. However, IBM's agreement with Microsoft did not afford it any control over Microsoft's licensing decisions, and so they took the opportunity to license their software to the numerous compatible machines or "clones" of the IBM PC which soon emerged to compete with IBM. In 1982, Texas Instruments employee Rod Canion and his associates were able to create an affordable portable version of the IBM PC, the Compaq, by reverse-engineering IBM's technology and replicating it. This was done legally via a complex process: most of the components were readily available from a number of manufacturers except for the BIOS chip linking the hardware and software. The chip would be analyzed by engineers and its specifications written down, then the task of assembling a duplicate chip would be performed by unaffiliated engineers with no knowledge of the chip, thus avoiding legal repercussions. The introduction of the Compaq made Canion and his company extremely wealthy, and provided competition for IBM. Others soon followed in Compaq's footsteps, using similar methods to create their own personal computers. IBM became concerned due to the prevalence of compatible machines and the fact that Microsoft was selling DOS to the companies competing with IBM. At this point the differences in "culture" between Microsoft and IBM became apparent: IBM was seen as a conservative and highly regimented environment, whereas Microsoft hired young people straight out of college and created a sense of community for its employees. Gates was perceived as someone who valued his employees and their unique ideas. By the end of the 1980's, IBM had lost its dominant market share of the PC market and was lagging behind its competitors. To restore their position in the PC world, IBM decided to change to a closed architecture system and to create their own operating system, called OS/2. They asked Microsoft to code OS/2 for them, At first Microsoft went along with IBM's plan out of a desire to "ride the bear," knowing that IBM had been responsible for much of their success. However, Gates soon realized that creating OS/2 for IBM presented a conflict of business interest, as IBM was planning on using OS/2 to undermine the market for compatible devices and thus prevent Microsoft from licensing DOS. At this time, Microsoft was working on their new user-friendly operating system, Windows, which IBM perceived as a threat. Gates decided to abandon OS/2 in favor of Windows, and soon the partnership between Microsoft and IBM evaporated. IBM returned to making mainframe computers, but by the late 1980's Microsoft surpassed them in worth. A working version of Windows was released in 1990, heralding a number of new changes for the computer industry. This selection from the Alan Gerry Cable Collection has been made available by the Gerry Foundation, Inc.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS
- DATE: June 12, 1996 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:56:21
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: B:74385
- GENRE: Public Affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV, 1996
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- John Gau … Executive Producer
- Stephen Segaller … Executive Producer
- Cheryl Downes … Associate Producer
- Paul Sen … Director
- Cyndee Readdean … Researcher
- Robert X. Cringely … Writer, Based on the book "Accidental Empires" by
- Nitin Sawhney … Music by
- Robert X. Cringely … Host
- Sam Albert … Guest
- Rich Seidner … Guest
- Jack Sams … Guest
- Bill Lowe … Guest
- Gordon Eubanks … Guest
- Jim Warren … Guest
- Vern Raburn … Guest
- Christine Comaford … Guest
- Jean Richardson … Guest
- Steve Ballmer … Guest
- Bill Gates … Guest
- Paul Allen … Guest
- Tim Patterson … Guest
- Bob Metcalfe … Guest
- Sparky Sparks … Guest
- Rod Canion … Guest
- Claude Stern … Guest
- Jim Cannavino … Guest
- Charles Simonyi … Guest
- Larry Ellison … Guest
- Esther Dyson … Guest
- Dan Bricklin
- Frank Carey
- Gary Kildall