Paul Allen

Microsoft co-founder who wrote the "non-runtime stuff" of the original 1975 Altair BASIC interpreter alongside Bill Gates and Monte Davidoff, and who flew to MITS in Albuquerque for the first live demonstration of the interpreter. Named on both the source header comment and the copyright line of the surviving 1975 listing — unlike Davidoff, who is named only in the former.

References

• claim-davidoff-wrote-third-of-altair-basic-uncredited
• claim-gates-2025-released-original-1975-altair-basic-source-scan
• claim-paul-allen-idea-man-describes-weiher-as-a-scribe-from-the-middle-ages
• Captures: 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-09-hop-davidoff-cprm-linux.md, 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-30-does-the-surviving-original-microsoftaltair-basic-source-listing.md, 10-inbox/raw/2026-08-16-hop-programmer-signature-colophon.md

Updates

• 2026-08-16: Allen's 2011 memoir Idea Man describes William Weiher — a Computer Center Corporation programmer who counted a teenage Allen and Gates among his users — as looking "like a scribe from the Middle Ages," an authorship image the vault's own colophon/easter-egg research chain arrived at independently and later, on the same day. (claim-paul-allen-idea-man-describes-weiher-as-a-scribe-from-the-middle-ages)