One Of The Names You Never Heard That Shaped Computers In The Beginning Of It All

Gary Kildall

Gary Kildall was a pioneer of personal computer software.

 He wrote programming language tools including assemblers (Intel 4004), interpreters (BASIC), and compilers (PL/M).

He created a widely-used disk operating system (CP/M).

He and his wife, Dorothy McEwen, started a successful company called Digital Research to develop and market CP/M, which for years was the dominant operating system for personal microcomputers.

Thousands of programs were written to run under it, and a million or more people might have used it.