Seattle Computer Products (SCP) was a Seattle, Washington computer hardware company. Twenty-two year old Tim Paterson was hired in June 1978 by SCP's owner Rod Brock. In 1980 Paterson wrote the QDOS operating system, later known as 86-DOS, over a four month period. Microsoft purchased a license for the system in December 1980 for $25,000, which it in turn provided to IBM as the first PC operating system, MS-DOS, which IBM adapted as PC-DOS. Subsequently, in July 1981, Microsoft purchased full rights to QDOS for an additional $50,000. However, Microsoft did not disclose it was reselling the system to IBM. As a result, SCP sued Microsoft, and settled for $1 million in 1986. SCP is no longer in business.

Paterson was honored along with Bill Gates with the Stewart Alsop Hindsight Award in 1991.

External links

• Account of Tim Paterson's role

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