Paul Allen: Microsoft geek who dreamed of a computer in every home
The man who persuaded school friend Bill Gates to drop out of Harvard to start what became the world’s biggest software company has died at the age of 65
They were teenage computer geeks, bespectacled kids from Seattle who taught themselves programming from a Teletype terminal, learned the basics of business from Fortune magazine and dreamed of “a computer in every home and on every desk”.
Paul Allen was the self-described “idea man”, the shy son of librarians.
Bill Gates was the business-oriented partner who brought the ideas to life.
And in 1975, when Allen was 22 and Gates was 19, the friends formed a company that became known as Microsoft, and unleashed a personal computer revolution that made both men fabulously wealthy.
Allen left the company after only eight years, amid a bout with Hodgkin’s disease and a deteriorating friendship with Gates.
But he remained a powerful force in technology and philanthropy for decades, investing his billions in an eclectic array of businesses and charitable efforts while acquiring sports teams, discovering second world war shipwrecks, and backing aerospace ventures that drew on his childhood fascination with adventure stories and science fiction.