Hello, thanks for listening to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service with

me, Jill Curzley. I'm taking you back to 1986 when the frightening phrase, welcome to

the dungeon, popped up on people's computer screens. It's all to do with the creation

of a computer virus known as brain.

I strongly believe in using the given resource by God, which is our brain. That is why I

kept my company name also brain. I'm not very intelligent, but I want to use my brain.

My childhood was mostly, you know, spent with my three brothers. One is my elder brother

and my younger brother is Basit Alvi, who was the co-author of this code or so-called virus.

That's Amjad Farouk Alvi, one of the brains behind the development of what he's thought to be the

first personal computer virus. It was named after his company. To understand how he became obsessed

with computing, we need to go back to when he was growing up in Pakistan. When I was schooling,

my father started our membership for the British Council Library and I used to

bunk my school and use to come to the library and read all electronics and computer books there.

Skipping school paid off as he went on to get a degree in maths and physics.

Here is brother's set up their company in a shop in Lahore.

We started this business around 1983 by maintaining small computers of British brand called

Sinclair that was created by Sir Clive Sinclair. He and his team set about launching the world's

first compact personal computer. The X80 is a complete computer. It plugged straight into

conventional television, straight into the aerial socket and its name, modification of the set.

I was a sole service provider in Pakistan for those small home computers. Soon words started

selling IBM PC compatibles. Computer maker IBM has been regarded as the electronics company which

could not only match the Japanese but actually defeat them. I started selling and maintaining those

...