Browser Wars - Poker Face | 3
Business Wars
Audible
4.6 • 13.5K Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2018
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s 1974, and a young programmer named Paul Allen has just caught a glimpse of the world’s first personal computer, the Altair 8800. It has the potential to change the computing landscape forever — but it doesn’t yet have an operating system. Altair’s developers sank every dollar they had into its hardware, banking that someone else would figure out how to make their machine run.
Now programmers are racing to develop an operating system and deliver it to the company’s headquarters in New Mexico. Allen knows he can do it, but in order to do it first, he’ll need some help. For that, he reaches out to his childhood friend, a 19-year-old Harvard sophomore named Bill Gates.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, prime members, you can listen to business wars, add free on Amazon music. |
| 0:04.8 | Download the app today. |
| 0:06.2 | Christmas time, 1974. |
| 0:16.0 | Paul Allen skims the newest issue of popular electronics at a new stand in Harvard Square. |
| 0:23.1 | On the magazine's cover is a photo of the world's first personal computer, the Altair 8800. |
| 0:30.3 | It's a simple gray metal box trimmed in blue with rows of switches and small red lights. |
| 0:36.1 | Allen reads the headline, |
| 0:38.0 | world's first mini computer kit to rival commercial models. |
| 0:42.6 | Oh no, we can't miss out on this. |
| 0:46.0 | Allen pays for the magazine and charges through the slush toward the dorm room of his childhood friend 19 year old Bill Gates, |
| 0:52.9 | a Harvard sophomore and fellow computer savant. |
| 0:56.0 | Allen's so good at programming. |
| 0:58.0 | He dropped out of college back in Washington State to work for a company called Honeywell in Boston. |
| 1:03.2 | He barges into Gates' room. |
| 1:05.5 | Hey, Bill, this thing is happening without us. |
| 1:09.1 | What thing? |
| 1:10.6 | Allen hands him the magazine. |
| 1:12.5 | Gates reads the article, rocking back and forth as he does whenever he's lost in thought. |
| 1:17.8 | Allen paces. |
| 1:20.0 | Gates finishes and tosses the article on the desk in front of him. |
| 1:24.1 | The article says they don't have an operating system for the Altair yet. |
| 1:27.6 | Right now it's just a hunk of metal. |
... |
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