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Tim Paterson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Born: | 1956 |
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| Occupation: | computer programmer, software designer |
| Website: | Paterson's Company |
Tim Paterson (born 1956) is an American computer programmer, best known as the original author of the popular MS-DOS operating system.
Educated at the University of Washington, Paterson worked as a repair technician for a computer store in Seattle, Washington. After he graduated magna cum laude in June 1978, he went to work for Seattle Computer Products as a designer and engineer.
He designed a schematic of Microsoft's Z-80 SoftCard which has a Z80 CPU and runs the CP/M operating system on an Apple II.
A month later, Intel released the 8086 CPU, and Paterson went to work designing an S-100 8086 board, which went to market in November 1979. The only commercial software that existed for the board was a standalone version of Microsoft BASIC, and without a true operating system, sales were slow. Paterson began work on QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) in April 1980 to fill that void. QDOS was approximately 4,000 lines of 8086 assembly code and highly compatible with the APIs of the popular CP/M operating system, and version 0.10 was complete by July 1980. While acknowledging that he made QDOS compatible with CP/M, Paterson has maintained that the QDOS program was his original work and has denied allegations that he referred to CP/M's code while writing it.[1] When a book appeared in 2004 claiming that QDOS was an unoriginal "rip-off" of CP/M, Paterson sued the authors and publishers for defamation.[2][3]
In December 1980 Microsoft secured the rights to market QDOS to other hardware manufacturers. Paterson left SCP in April 1981 and worked for Microsoft from May 1981 to April 1982. After a brief second stint with SCP, Paterson started his own company, Falcon Technology, which was bought by Microsoft in 1986. Paterson did a second stint with Microsoft from 1986-1988 and a third stint from 1990-1998. During his third stint at Microsoft, he worked on Visual Basic.
After leaving Microsoft a third time, Paterson founded another software development company, Paterson Technology, and also made several appearances on the Comedy Central television program Battlebots. Paterson also races rally cars in the SCCA Pro Rally series, and even engineered his own trip computer which he integrated into the axle of a four-wheel drive Porsche 911.
"Life begins with a disk drive." -- Tim Paterson [4]
- ^ Paterson, Tim (1994-10-03). "From the Mailbox: The Origins of DOS". Microprocessor Report. Retrieved on 2006-11-20.
- ^ "Programmer sues author over role in Microsoft history", USA Today, 2005-03-02. Retrieved on November 20, 2006.
- ^ Paterson v. Little, Brown, and Co. 2005 CV5-327P. United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. Retrieved on 2006-11-20.
- ^ Hunter, David (1983). "The Roots of DOS". Retrieved on March 31, 2007.
- Paterson Technology website, a company founded by Tim Paterson