Rami Grunbaum, Deputy Business Editor, Seattle Times

Hey Bill, Sorry I Kept Your Book Since High School

July 2, 2008 at 12:00 am PT

Bill Gates once typed a declaration, sideways, inside the front cover of a paperback book: “Introduction to Programming,” a 1969 manual for Digital Equipment Corp.’s PDP-8 mini-computer. “Bill Gates owns this book. He wants it. Give it back to him! He will tell you.” Why I ignored this cryptic but unambiguous directive is lost in the fuzzy memories of our high-school years at Lakeside. I packed the manual away with other books after graduating in 1974, a year after Gates.

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Tagged with: Bill Gates, Microsoft, Rami Grunbaum

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