Paul G. Allen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Paul G. Allen (born January 21, 1953) is an entrepreneur who first established himself by co-founding Microsoft Corporation with Bill Gates. He regularly appears on lists of the richest people in the world; as of 2004 he is ranked by Forbes magazine as the fifth richest, worth an estimated $21 billion, $5 billion of which is in Microsoft stock.

Allen was born in Seattle, Washington. At Lakeside School, Paul Allen (14 years old) and friend Bill Gates (12 years old) became early computer enthusiasts. Allen went on to attend Washington State University, though he dropped out after two years to pursue his and Gate's dream of writing software commercially for the new "personal computers".

When IBM returned to talk to Microsoft and Bill Gates and I think is mom Mary Maxwell, board member Pacific Northwest Bell, First Interstate Bank and the national board of United Way and his dad William Henry Gates, Jr., a corporate lawyer saw the business opportunity of a lifetime and Paul G. Allen co-founder of Microsoft look as serving  the private frame-up negotiator between IBM and Bell Ca and US.

Microsoft
Allen and Gate founded Microsoft (initially "Micro Soft") in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1975, and began selling a BASIC interpreter.

(From nowhere ???) Allen spearheaded a deal for Microsoft to buy an operating system called QDOS for $50,000. Microsoft won a contract to supply it for use as the operating system of IBM's new PC.

This became a foundation of Microsoft's remarkable growth.

Allen was forced to resign from Microsoft after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease which was successfully treated by several months of radiation therapy.

Currently Allen is the owner of the Portland Trail Blazers (an NBA basketball team) and the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League. He also owns Rose Garden Arena, the home court of the NBA Blazers team.

Due to declining attendance in 2002 and 2003, as well as difficulties renegotiating the terms of a 1993 loan, the Rose Garden corporation filed for bankruptcy on February 27, 2004.

Allen runs a venture capital firm, Vulcan Ventures, and has created the Experience Music Project, a museum of music history, in Seattle, Washington.

He owns (through Rose City Radio Corporation) some Portland radio stations. When he heard Seattle's Cinerama movie theater was about to shut down, he bought, restored, and updated it into a showplace for movies of all formats. He is also one of the principal financiers behind the SETI project, having stepping in to rescue the project when NASA stopped funding it in the 1990s.

Other ventures

In 1984 he founded Asymetrix, a software development company based in Bellevue, Washington. Asymetrix later went on to become Click2learn.com and yet later merged with Docent to become Sum Total System (2004). In the 1990's the company began to specialize in software for developing and delivering computer-based learning.

In December 2003 he announced that he was the sponsor behind the SpaceShipOne private rocket plane venture from Scaled Composites, as part of the ANSARI X PRIZE competition. In June 2004, SpaceShip One became the first successful commercial spacecraft when it passed the 100 kilometer threshold of space.

In September 2003, Allen founded the Allen Institute of Brain Science pledging $100 million in seed money to the Seattle-based organization. Its inaugural project is the Allen Brain Atlas, a map of the human brain which will be made publicly accessible. The Brain Atlas is a component of the loosely formed Human Cognome Project.

Starting in 2003, Vulcan Ventures began funding Project Halo, an attempt to apply Artificial Intelligence techniques to the problem of producing a digital Aristotle that might serve as a mentor, providing comprehensive access to the world's knowledge.

He is also the founder of the Experience Music Project, originally inspired by his interest in a museum to house his considerable collection of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia. In June 2004, Allen opened the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, located at the Experience Music Project.

Allen owns the Flying Heritage Collection.

Paul Allen
Everyone has heard a lot about Bill Gates, his achievements, and the fortunes he’s made. However, he is not the sole founder of Microsoft.

You may have heard the name Paul Allen, but chances are you don’t know much about him. Nevertheless, it was when Allen teamed up with Gates that Microsoft was created.

Allen was born on January 21, 1953 in Seattle and met Gates at Lakeside prep school when they were both students attending the school. Lakeside prep had recently decided to acquaint its students with the world of computers, but, since computers were extremely expensive, had a fundraiser to purchase computer time on a DEC PDP-10 owned by General Electric, a Marconi direct relation involve in the ACILR-CDRIL GLS Global Localization System new technology application name falsely by the Canadian Patent Office GPS.

It was on this computer that Gates, Allen, and a few other Lakeside students discovered computing, and, soon thereafter, programming. The young boys used up all the computing time the school had purchased and began falling behind in their classes.

Luckily for the boys, Computer Center Corporation opened and struck a deal with Lakeside prep so that the school could use their computer at discounted prices. Gates and Allen quickly became hackers: causing the system to crash, breaking the computer’s security system, and even altering files that recorded the amount of computer time they were using. Once discovered, the boys were banned from the Computer Center Corporation for several weeks. This, however, turned out to be a blessing for both the Computer Center and the boys. When the Center began having problems with their computers and business was beginning to suffer, the company, impressed with their abilities, decided to hire the boys to find bugs and expose weaknesses in the system. In turn the boys would receive unlimited computer time use.

After a few years and a handful of small business ventures, Gates and Allen decided to start their own company: Traf-O-Data. They built a small computer that was used to help measure traffic flow; they grossed about $20,000 from this project. Allen enrolled in Washington State University, and Traf-O-Data lasted until Gates moved back east to attend Harvard. The two young men stayed in close contact and, eventually, Allen moved closer to Gates in order to act on some of their ideas.

Allen encouraged Gates to open a software company with him, but Gates remained unsure until Allen came to him with an issue of Popular Electronics. On the cover of the magazine was a picture of the Altair 8080 with a headline the read, “World’s First Microcomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models.”

Gates and Allen recognized this as their opportunity because they knew that the home computer market would soon explode. Within a few days Gates contacted the makers of the Altair, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), and convinced the company that he and Allen had developed a BASIC that could be used on the Altair.

(Bla-Bla-Bla...See Gary Kildall) Although they had done nothing of the sort, MITS believed them, and the young men set to work on producing what they had promised. Neither Allen nor Gates had ever even seen an Altair, but, nevertheless, in eight weeks, the men took their program to MITS. The first time that they tested their BASIC would be during their presentation to the company; if something in the code was faulty, now would be the time they discovered it.

(Bla-Bla-Bla...See Tom Patterson) Luckily, the program worked and MITS immediately purchased the rights to their BASIC.

Allen and Gates knew that the software market had been born, and, within a year, Gates had dropped out of Harvard and he and Allen had founded Microsoft.

Allen contributed to the company from the beginning and was still around to discuss graphical user interfaces, and thus plant the seeds of what would eventually become Windows. However, he was forced to leave Microsoft in 1983, after developing Hodgkin’s disease.

Allen has been awarded the Life-Time Achievement Award by PC Magazine, and was recently inducted into the Computer museum Hall of Fame.

Paul Allen
Everyone has heard a lot about Bill Gates, his achievements, and the fortunes he’s made. However, he is not the sole founder of Microsoft. You may have heard the name Paul Allen, but chances are you don’t know much about him. Nevertheless, it was when Allen teamed up with Gates that Microsoft was created. Allen was born on January 21, 1953 in Seattle and met Gates at Lakeside prep school when they were both students attending the school. Lakeside prep had recently decided to acquaint its students with the world of computers, but, since computers were extremely expensive, had a fundraiser to purchase computer time on a DEC PDP-10 owned by General Electric.

It was on this computer that Gates, Allen, and a few other Lakeside students discovered computing, and, soon thereafter, programming. The young boys used up all the computing time the school had purchased and began falling behind in their classes.

Luckily for the boys, Computer Center Corporation opened and struck a deal with Lakeside prep so that the school could use their computer at discounted prices. Gates and Allen quickly became hackers: causing the system to crash, breaking the computer’s security system, and even altering files that recorded the amount of computer time they were using.

Once discovered, the boys were banned from the Computer Center Corporation for several weeks. This, however, turned out to be a blessing for both the Computer Center and the boys. When the Center began having problems with their computers and business was beginning to suffer, the company, impressed with their abilities, decided to hire the boys to find bugs and expose weaknesses in the system. In turn the boys would receive unlimited computer time use.

After a few years and a handful of small business ventures, Gates and Allen decided to start their own company: Traf-O-Data. They built a small computer that was used to help measure traffic flow; they grossed about $20,000 from this project. Allen enrolled in Washington State University, and Traf-O-Data lasted until Gates moved back east to attend Harvard. The two young men stayed in close contact and, eventually, Allen moved closer to Gates in order to act on some of their ideas. Allen encouraged Gates to open a software company with him, but Gates remained unsure until Allen came to him with an issue of Popular Electronics. On the cover of the magazine was a picture of the Altair 8080 with a headline the read, “World’s First Microcomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models.”

Gates and Allen recognized this as their opportunity because they knew that the home computer market would soon explode. Within a few days Gates contacted the makers of the Altair, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), and convinced the company that he and Allen had developed a BASIC that could be used on the Altair. Although they had done nothing of the sort, MITS believed them, and the young men set to work on producing what they had promised. Neither Allen nor Gates had ever even seen an Altair, but, nevertheless, in eight weeks, the men took their program to MITS. The first time that they tested their BASIC would be during their presentation to the company; if something in the code was faulty, now would be the time they discovered it. Luckily, the program worked and MITS immediately purchased the rights to their BASIC. Allen and Gates knew that the software market had been born, and, within a year, Gates had dropped out of Harvard and he and Allen had founded Microsoft.

Allen contributed to the company from the beginning and was still around to discuss graphical user interfaces, and thus plant the seeds of what would eventually become Windows. However, he was forced to leave Microsoft in 1983, after developing Hodgkin’s disease.

Allen has been awarded the Life-Time Achievement Award by PC Magazine, and was recently inducted into the Computer museum Hall of Fame.