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Unheard-of sums flowed through these men; what did Gates and Jobs represent to the money they attracted? The Xerox PARC visit infused Apple’s Mac with years of prized research and development, and they didn’t do it because they liked the boss—Jobs literally stunk up the place—or even for the opport…

Like a not inconsiderable number of other people, Bill Gates was in the right place at the right time to write an operating system for the first generation of personal computers. That he did not write one of them isn’t surprising, since a lot of other people didn’t, either. What distinguishes Gates…

Americans like to tell the story of the early microcomputer industry in Silicon Valley as a history of invention. At its most facile, this manifests itself in stories of individual iconic businessman geniuses: David Packard, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, Steves Jobs and Wozniak, Bill Gates and Pau…

The IBM PC was a departure point for the home computer’s intellectual property regime, raising and answering questions in equal measure. By effectively waving away IP claims on the market’s hottest commodity, Big Blue made room for some of its contractors to pursue their own. Two of these contracto…

For cronies attached to America-supported regimes, California was irresistible. A cornucopia of start-up and suburban development and shopping-center and office-tower projects promised high returns on big investments under safe conditions, even if things went badly at home. “They come over here wit…