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by Peter Balsiger, Euro on Sunday
The global elite of information technology has reacted emphatically to the death of Paul Allen and his transformation into Elogen. Without him, there would be no personal computer today, wrote Bill GatesAccording to Paul Satya Nadella, Paul Allen has changed the world. "I learned so much from him". And Tim Cook, president of Microsoft, rival of Microsoft, tweeted: "Our industry has lost a pioneer and our world has a positive power."
Paul Allen – this man was much part of one and the same person: software pioneer, investor, sportsman, philanthropist, rock guitarist, art collector, science fiction fan. "This man was rock n roll", judge "Der Spiegel".
Paul Allen and Bill Gates – that was a brilliant duowho revolutionized the computer world. Allen was the creative dreamer, Gates the glossy pragmatist. The two had met as teenagers at Lakeside School, an elite private school in Seattle. Allen was a bookworm at the age of seven: "I tried to understand how things worked and how they were badembled. rocket airplane and nuclear power stations. "
Due to an allergy to the grbad, he was not allowed to play sports. Allen is usually in the last row at school. And after discovering the brand new computer room at school with Bill Gates, he barely appeared in clbad. Both were computer enthusiasts and programmed a tic-tac-toe game for the school computer.
Allen, like Gates, was very intelligent. At the university entrance test, he was even more successful than his friend. But young Paul had interests more diverse than Bill Gates. Early on, he became interested in rock music, discovered Jimi Hendrix at the age of 14 and learned to play guitar. He participated in parties with his band Grown Men and even recorded a solo album in 2014, accompanied by stars such as Joe Walsh of the Eagles.
The Microsoft Klitsche
But his main interest was soon the computer. In 1972, he founded a company with Bill Gates. Your only product: a software evaluation of traffic data. Paul Allen was only 19 years old and Bill Gates, 17 years old.
After that, their paths separated. Paul Allen graduated from Washington State University and Bill Gates went to Harvard. Two years later, Allen left college to work as a programmer in Boston and persuaded his friend Gates to leave Harvard College and start a new business with him in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
It was the birth of MicrosoftThe name, originally Micro-Soft, was a combination of "micro-computer" and "software". Allen had then seen the first personal computer on the cover of an obscure magazine. He guessed the potential of the device and asked Gates to develop operating software for the PC. It was in 1975.
Gates got 65%, Allen 35% of Microsoft stock. Gates had then explained in his autobiography "Idea Man" that Paul Allen had dropped out of school for the company and was working on Microsoft's first successful model, Basic, more than Paul and that he therefore deserved a larger share . At that time, Microsoft was little more than a small blogger in programming. One of many. Allen and Gates have programmed computer software with the first Intel chips and developed versions of the Basic programming language. In 1978, the annual turnover of the company was about one million dollars.
"In the beginning, our management style was somewhat relaxed," Allen said later. "We made all the decisions together, and it's hard to remember who did what." There were no problems between the two countries. With one exception: "I always had to call Paul in the morning to tell him that it was time to get to work, he was sleeping even longer than me," says Bill Gates. Paul is justified in saying that they were always working late into the night. "You always slept under the desk," he reminded his friend Gates.
The breakthrough came in 1980 with the order from IBMdevelop an operating system for the first PC. Gates and Allen had favorably bought the 86-DOS operating system, had it rebuilt a bit and had finally licensed MS as MS-DOS. The PCs have been a huge success, MS-DOS being the basis of early versions of Windows.
Allen and Gates had created a coin machine that still works today. This case suddenly made Microsoft a serious player, the company developed in the following years to become the global group. The launch of Microsoft in 1986 made the two friends incredibly rich. Bill Gates' fortune is now valued at $ 96.7 billion by Forbes, and Paul Allen last saw $ 20 billion.
Wealth was for Paul Allen, however never been important. At the time of the transaction, the two founders had paid only $ 36,000 in annual salary. "We never really thought about counting our pennies," he confessed "Forbes". "For us, the success has been to immediately invest money and further develop the company.
Bill Gates then acknowledged Paul Allen's contribution to Microsoft's success: "This company trained two friends who worked together 18 hours a day to discover computers, and that would not have happened without Paul's brilliant mind." Allen retired to Microsoft in 1983. He suffered from lymphatic cancer (called non-Hodgkin's lymphoma), but could be treated successfully. A return to Microsoft would have been problematic: a founder could not work part time in his company. Allen and Gates were in agreement on this point.
But what was the relationship between the two really? In his autobiography, Allen did not make his friend appear too handsome. "Allen accused his co-founder of having earned him the deserved recognition of his performance at Microsoft," writes the "Frankfurter Allgemeine". "He described an episode where, a few months after his diagnosis, he had a conversation between Gates and Microsoft's future CEO, Steve Ballmer, in which the two men complained about the loss of productivity in their company and discussed dilution of its stake in the company. "
Billions worth
Allen beat his shares step by step and in 1986 founded the investment firm Vulcan Ventures to finance their own investments. He bought a business empire, invested in more than 140 companies, funded everything that interested him personally. For $ 200 million, he bought the Seattle Seahawks football team and, for $ 70 million, the Portland Trail Blazers, a professional basketball team. His idol Jimi Hendrix (he bought the guitar that he had used to play at the Woodstock Festival) had a rock-n-roll museum built by star architect Frank O. Gehry in Seattle for $ 240 million.
He owned an aviation museum and in several science-fiction museums, he owned one of the world's largest private collections of paintings with works by Czanne, Degas, Gauguin, Picbado, Renoir, Van Gogh, Rothko and Lichtenstein. And he was the owner of one of the largest private yachts in the world, the 126-meter "Octopus" (with his own submarine and two helicopters), as well as the smaller "Tatoosh", 92-long meters. In 2015 he searched and found with the help of "Octopus" the wreck of the Japanese battleship "Musashi" sunk in 1944 off the Philippines by the American Air Force.
Allen has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in brain and cancer research, saving Congo's great apes, fighting Ebola and exploring extraterrestrial intelligence. And he also signed the Giving Pledge, the promise to donate most of his badets after his death, an initiative of Bill Gates, who has joined many of the leading super-rich in the United States.
In the 1990s, Allen was primarily involved in businesses and start-ups commensurate with his vision of a "connected world." He thought that computers, home entertainment, television and the Internet would one day be merged. Already in 1974, he had warned Bill Gates that people would buy a computer day and exchange information. As a result, it has bought satellite TV providers, mobile phone licenses, and since 1998 has invested $ 9 billion in cable companies. He took part in the new company Metricom, which wanted to cover the big American cities with a wireless network. However, he has unsuccessfully invested in an Internet portal and a private think tank.
Allen had a Microsoft bonus for years on Wall Street. The announcement of the investment of Vulcan Ventures in a company could double the price of its shares. But the networked world did not come true as quickly as Allen had endured it. Bill Gates commented on Allen's investment in "Business Week" in 2004: "He was brilliant, naïve and very early."
Twelve billion dollars Allen should have cost his investments in the networked world. In view of these failures, the American magazine "Wired" Allen in 1994 under the title "Milliardr by chance" even becomes a biography of the same title: The journalist Laura Rich conceived in 2003 in the book the image of a visionary of the real world, a Don Quixote of computer science. The industry is pursuing its vision of a "wired world" but is constantly being beaten by the intelligent Gates.
And the "Magazin Manager" judged: "While the world celebrates Bill Gates as a business leader anticipating, Allen has been named one of the worst managers of the year, but he 's only done it' s way. collapse after the stroke of genius from Microsoft and with his venture capital firm Vulcan Ventures, he has helped so many unsuccessful companies to congratulate himself can almost blame the dotcom disaster ".
But Allen has also had success as an investor. He earned $ 100 million with AOL, a few hundred million dollars with Ticketmaster and his $ 500 million investment in the Hollywood studio Dreamworks turned out to be a lucrative business.
Later, Paul Allen even wanted to open up space. His company, Stratolaunch Systems, planned to build the world's largest aircraft, serving as a launching pad for multi-level launchers that can carry satellites, spacecraft or cargo in space. The first test flights were scheduled for this year.
The machine has two parallel shells, which are interconnected by a Tragmittelmittelmittel. Powered by six Boeing 747 turbines, the stature is incredible, representing 117 meters long, or 40% more than the current largest pbadenger aircraft, the Airbus A 380.
Paul Allen had the reputation of organizing extravagant parties in the United States. "The masked ball at which he invited his guests to Venice in 1997 is still considered legendary in the scene today," wrote the "Magazine Magazin", citing a Hollywood producer who has ennobled Allen as "Medicis" ".
short CV
Paul Allen was born on January 21, 1953 in Seattle, son of a university professor and a teacher of elementary school. Even as a student, he has become friends with Bill Gates. With him, he founded Microsoft in 1975 and developed the first PC operating system. In 1983, he left Microsoft. As a result, he participated in about 140 companies – mostly without success. Allen succumbed to cancer on October 15, 2018.
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Sources of images: Miles Harris / CC BY-SA 3.0
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