Read Online Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by Erickson wallace - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Erickson wallace
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eighth graders at Lakeside to transcribe the numbers from the traffic tapes onto computer cards, which he then punched into the CDC computer at the University of Washington. His software program turned the data into easily readable traffic-flow charts.
Chris Larson, four years behind Gates, was one of a handful of students hired at low wages to transcribe numbers from the traffic tapes onto the computer punch cards. His cousin, Brad Augustine, was also hired for the Traf-O-Data work. Several other students helped out, as did a few mothers when the kids were overwhelmed with homework.
Once Traf-O-Data was up and running, Allen decided he and Gates should build their own computer to analyze the traffic tapes directly, thus eliminating the need for manual work. It proved a difficult task. They hired a Boeing engineer to help with the hardware design. Gates came up with $360, and he and Allen purchased one of Intel’s new 8008 microprocessor chips, one of the first of the chips sold through a distributor anywhere in the country. They connected a 16-channel paper tape reader to their “computer,” and fed traffic-counter tapes directly into the machine.
It was not nearly as capable as the microcomputers that would come later, but the Traf-O-Data machine worked—most of the time. Mary Gates once recalled her son demonstrating his traffic machine to a city official in her dining room. When the computer crashed, and the official lost interest, Bill pleaded with his mother, “Tell him mom, tell him it really works!”
Gates and Allen reportedly grossed about $20,000 from Traf-O-Data. But the enterprise was never a great success, and it eventually folded after Gates went off to college.
During his junior year at Lakeside, while finding business for Traf-O-Data, Gates came up with other money-making schemes. He and Evans formed another computer group, called Logic Simulation Company, and they sent out student flyers to drum up business and a cheap labor force.
One of their letters to Lakeside students said: “LPG and LSC are two computer-oriented computer organizations involved in a number of attempts to make money. These include class scheduling, working on traffic volume studies, producing cookbooks. ... We want to expand our work force, which now has five Lakesiders. It’s not just for computer freaks. We think we will need people who can type and do drafting and architectural drawings. If interested, see Kent Evans or Bill Gates or Chris Larson.”
The letter mentioned “equal opportunity for males and females,” and included a form for interested students to note how many hours they might be able to work, their availability for summer employment, and their computer experience.
In May 1972, near the end of their junior year, Gates and Evans were approached by the Lakeside administration about computerizing the school’s class schedule for its nearly 400 students. The scheduling system had long been a time-consuming mess. Lakeside wanted the new computer program ready for the start of the 1972-73 school year in the fall. A former Boeing engineer who had been hired as a math teacher at Lakeside had been working on the project, but he was killed in a plane crash. The job now fell to Gates and Evans.
Tragically, less than a week later, on May 28, Memorial Day weekend, Kent Evans was killed in a mountain-climbing accident. A few months after Evans died, the school learned he was among its 11 semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Test. Gates, too, made the list (the next year he would be a finalist). After Evans died, a shaken Gates asked Allen to help him with the class scheduling project. They agreed to do it that summer when Allen returned from Washington State University.
(In 1986, Gates and Allen gave Lakeside $2.2 million to build a science and math center named after them, dedicating the building’s auditorium to Evans.)
The first month or so of that summer, as a kind of farewell tribute to Evans, who
Chris Larson, four years behind Gates, was one of a handful of students hired at low wages to transcribe numbers from the traffic tapes onto the computer punch cards. His cousin, Brad Augustine, was also hired for the Traf-O-Data work. Several other students helped out, as did a few mothers when the kids were overwhelmed with homework.
Once Traf-O-Data was up and running, Allen decided he and Gates should build their own computer to analyze the traffic tapes directly, thus eliminating the need for manual work. It proved a difficult task. They hired a Boeing engineer to help with the hardware design. Gates came up with $360, and he and Allen purchased one of Intel’s new 8008 microprocessor chips, one of the first of the chips sold through a distributor anywhere in the country. They connected a 16-channel paper tape reader to their “computer,” and fed traffic-counter tapes directly into the machine.
It was not nearly as capable as the microcomputers that would come later, but the Traf-O-Data machine worked—most of the time. Mary Gates once recalled her son demonstrating his traffic machine to a city official in her dining room. When the computer crashed, and the official lost interest, Bill pleaded with his mother, “Tell him mom, tell him it really works!”
Gates and Allen reportedly grossed about $20,000 from Traf-O-Data. But the enterprise was never a great success, and it eventually folded after Gates went off to college.
During his junior year at Lakeside, while finding business for Traf-O-Data, Gates came up with other money-making schemes. He and Evans formed another computer group, called Logic Simulation Company, and they sent out student flyers to drum up business and a cheap labor force.
One of their letters to Lakeside students said: “LPG and LSC are two computer-oriented computer organizations involved in a number of attempts to make money. These include class scheduling, working on traffic volume studies, producing cookbooks. ... We want to expand our work force, which now has five Lakesiders. It’s not just for computer freaks. We think we will need people who can type and do drafting and architectural drawings. If interested, see Kent Evans or Bill Gates or Chris Larson.”
The letter mentioned “equal opportunity for males and females,” and included a form for interested students to note how many hours they might be able to work, their availability for summer employment, and their computer experience.
In May 1972, near the end of their junior year, Gates and Evans were approached by the Lakeside administration about computerizing the school’s class schedule for its nearly 400 students. The scheduling system had long been a time-consuming mess. Lakeside wanted the new computer program ready for the start of the 1972-73 school year in the fall. A former Boeing engineer who had been hired as a math teacher at Lakeside had been working on the project, but he was killed in a plane crash. The job now fell to Gates and Evans.
Tragically, less than a week later, on May 28, Memorial Day weekend, Kent Evans was killed in a mountain-climbing accident. A few months after Evans died, the school learned he was among its 11 semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Test. Gates, too, made the list (the next year he would be a finalist). After Evans died, a shaken Gates asked Allen to help him with the class scheduling project. They agreed to do it that summer when Allen returned from Washington State University.
(In 1986, Gates and Allen gave Lakeside $2.2 million to build a science and math center named after them, dedicating the building’s auditorium to Evans.)
The first month or so of that summer, as a kind of farewell tribute to Evans, who
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