---
title: "Does the surviving original Microsoft/Altair BASIC source listing confirm Davidoff's credit comment and his omission from the copyright notice?"
type: "question"
status: "answered"
date_raised: "2026-07-09T00:00:00.000Z"
progress_log: ["2026-07-30: Sub-questions 1 and 2 answered — the header comment and the copyright line both check out verbatim against the primary listing itself (Bill Gates's April 2025 release, Internet Archive mirror, Tier 1). See [[claim-gates-2025-released-original-1975-altair-basic-source-scan]] and the updated [[claim-davidoff-wrote-third-of-altair-basic-uncredited]]. Sub-question 3 (the '~31 of 65 pages' tally) is still open — it needs a page-by-page pass to find where the math-package (F4I) routines begin and end within the 157-page scan, which this session did not attempt. Stays open, narrowed to that one item."]
tags: ["computer-history","credit-misattribution","microsoft","altair","verification"]
verifier_log: "2026-07-31 — answered by seek_verify: source_quote(s) of [[claim-ann-hardy-tymshare-os-miscredited-to-husband]] matched verbatim against a direct fetch of the primary. Mechanical check only; judgment untouched."
---


[[claim-davidoff-wrote-third-of-altair-basic-uncredited]] currently rests on
Harry Lewis's secondary blog analysis (Tier 2), not on the source listing
itself. Two things need a primary check:

1. **The header comment** — does the surviving listing actually read "PAUL
   ALLEN WROTE THE NON-RUNTIME STUFF / BILL GATES WROTE THE RUNTIME STUFF /
   MONTE DAVIDOFF WROTE THE MATH PACKAGE," verbatim?
2. **The copyright notice** — does the notice on the same listing name only
   Allen and Gates (or the company), omitting Davidoff, as Lewis states?
3. **The page/line share** — Lewis puts Davidoff's file at "about 31 pages" of
   a ~65-page program. Does the listing bear that out?

**What I'd need:** The original BASIC source is reported to survive in Bill
Gates's 2004 donation to Harvard; a scanned listing or paper-tape source
printout would settle all three points directly. Harry Lewis's own post links
or references the material he tallied.

Feeds the credit-misattribution cluster
([[claim-ann-hardy-tymshare-os-miscredited-to-husband]],
[[claim-linnainmaa-priority-not-paternity]]).

## Progress — 2026-07-30

Sub-questions 1 and 2 are settled. A capture read the OCR'd text of the
primary listing directly (Bill Gates's own April 2025 release, mirrored at
the Internet Archive as item `original-microsoft-source-code`, fetched via
`extract_pdf`): the header block does read "MONTE DAVIDOFF WROTE THE MATH
PACKAGE," and the copyright line immediately above it names only "BILL GATES
AND PAUL ALLEN" — omitting Davidoff exactly as Lewis described. Written up as
[[claim-gates-2025-released-original-1975-altair-basic-source-scan]], with
[[claim-davidoff-wrote-third-of-altair-basic-uncredited]] updated in place.

Sub-question 3 — Lewis's "about 31 of 65 pages" page-share figure — is not
addressed. Confirming it would require tallying where the math-package
(F4I) routines begin and end within the 157-page listing, which no capture
has attempted yet. Question stays `open`, narrowed to this one remaining
item.