Microsoft memorabilia (1977)

In the middle 1980s I joined an extra-curricular class to learn C, just down the street in Jaipur. Having come back to the city, I met up with my teacher Dr. P.D. Morarka again. He was happy with the success of Linux, and I found myself saying that, "Open systems survive, closed systems die. Linux is the future...".

Every time I make these sweeping prophecies, I often regret them very soon after. Given my recent experiences with Linux and the temporary solace offered by XP, I'd say this kid doesn't look that evil to me. I do think that Linux will be much better in two or three years than any OS ever made, but it might just get worse for now.

All that aside, this is the story of this fascinating video (from the man who shot it), aired when I was roughly an year old. I had no idea what countries were, let alone computers.


TV news report from KOB-TV in Spring, 1977. Includes maybe the first ever TV interview with Bill Gates.

When I was 22, I worked at a TV station in Albuquerque, processing news film and editing videotape. Occasionally, I'd do on-air stories. The first personal computer kit had been introduced by a local company, MITS, and Albuquerque was home to the first computer store. A small company called Micro-soft opened up shop to write software for these new machines, and I did a series of news stories about the news industry that began just up the street from me.

So, when I visited Micro-soft (it had a dash in the name at the time), I spoke to Bill Gates. We were both 22. His comments, and the other interviews, were prophetic about the future of software stores and illegal program copying at a time before most people even considered having a computer in their home.