Kay Nishi and the Meeting that Started MS-DOS

September 28, 1980, was a Sunday, and the Old National Bank Building in Bellevue, WA was mostly empty. Except for eighth floor, occupied by Microsoft - a privately owned software company with about 50 employees at that time. Microsoft’s employees generally worked long hours, and it was no wonder that on that evening the light was on in a corner office that belonged to Bill Gates. With him were Paul Allen and Kay Nishi1.Kazuhiko “Kay” Nishi, Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1978Allen and Gates were childhood friends and co-founders of Microsoft. In 1975, after the first commercially successful microcomputer Altair 8800 was released, they wrote a BASIC interpreter for the new machine without even seeing it and then moved to Albuquerque to be close to MITS - the company that produced Altair.By 1978, Microsoft was supplying BASIC for most early home computers. The relationship with MITS deteriorated and the founders decided to move the company to Seattle area. Before the move, a young…