Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen dies, aged 65

New York

PAUL G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft who helped usher in the personal computing revolution and then channelled his enormous fortune into transforming Seattle into a cultural destination, died Monday in Seattle. He was 65.

The cause was complications of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, his family said in a statement.

The disease recurred recently, after having been in remission for years. He left Microsoft in 1982, when the cancer first appeared.

He was a force at the company during its first seven years, along with his co-founder, Bill Gates, as the personal computer was moving from a hobbyist curiosity to a mainstream technology, used by both businesses and consumers.

When the company was founded in 1975, the machines were known as microcomputers, to contrast the desktop computers with the hulking room-size machines of the day.

Mr Allen came up with the name Micro-Soft, a company that made software for small computers. The term personal computer (PC) would become commonplace later.

The company's first product was a much-compressed version of the Basic programming language, designed to work on the underpowered machines.

Yet the company's big move came when it promised IBM that it would deliver the operating system software for the computer giant's entry into the PC business. Mr Gates and Mr Allen committed to supplying that software in 1980, but it was then a promise without a product.

Mr Allen was instrumental in putting together a deal to buy an early operating system from a programmer in Seattle. The Microsoft founders tweaked the code, and it became the operating system that guided the operations of the IBM personal computer, which was introduced in 1981.

That product, called Microsoft Disk Operating System, or MS-DOS, was a watershed for the company. Later, Microsoft came up with its immensely popular Windows operating system, designed to be used with a computer mouse and onscreen icons - point-and-click computing rather than typed commands. It would also produce the Office productivity programs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft's current chief executive, said in a statement: "In his own quiet and persistent way, he created magical products, experiences and institutions, and in doing so, he changed the world."

When Mr Allen and Mr Gates founded Microsoft, their bold ambition was to both develop technology and make personal computing widely affordable - a personal computer on every desktop. Along the way, Microsoft became the dominant personal computer software company, which made Mr Allen, as well as Mr Gates - the face of the company - immensely wealthy. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index lists him as having a net worth of $26.1 billion.

Mr Allen used his wealth to acquire a professional basketball team, the Portland Trail Blazers, in 1988 and a pro football team, the Seattle Seahawks, in 1996.

He was also an investor and a generous philanthropist.

He donated more than US$2 billion toward non-profit groups dedicated to the advancement of science, technology, education, the environment and the arts. Among the scientific research organisations he funded were the Allen Institute for Brain Science in 2003 and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in 2014.

And while he had some philanthropy that was global, like a passion for ending elephant poaching, much of his post-Microsoft work centred on Seattle, where he has been the transformative force behind many of the city's leading cultural institutions.

He restored the old Cinerama movie theatre to modern standards, seemingly ideal for watching science-fiction films, and he hired Frank Gehry to design the Museum of Pop Culture, which Mr Allen founded in 2000 under the original name of the Experience Music Project. The wild, undulating building displayed items revealing Mr Allen's cultural obsessions, including guitars owned by Jimi Hendrix and Captain Kirk's command chair from Star Trek.

In the 1990s, Mr Allen bought a piece of land in the South Lake Union neighbourhood to help build a Seattle version of Central Park, but the public ultimately voted down the plans.

He took those real estate holdings and through his company, Vulcan, developed South Lake Union into the home of Amazon. Google and other tech companies have been opening offices in the revitalised neighbourhood.

Margaret O'Mara, a history professor at the University of Washington, said: "He has a definitive role of what we understand as today's Seattle, which is about technology, about real estate and about a distinctive local culture with international visibility." NYTIMES