Traf-O-Data
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Traf-O-Data was a partnership between Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Paul Gilbert. The objective was to read the raw data from roadway traffic counters and create useful reports for traffic engineers. The company had only modest success but the experience was significant to the creation of Microsoft a few years later.[1]
State and local governments frequently do traffic surveys with a pneumatic road tube traffic counter. Rubber hoses are stretched across a road and passing vehicles create air pulses that are recorded by a roadside counter. Today a solar powered microprocessor system records the number of vehicles and the time of day each passed. In 1970 the counts were mechanically recorded on a roll of paper tape. The time and number of axles were punched as a 16 bit pattern into the paper tape. (The standard Teletype paper tape uses only 8 bits.) Cities would hire private companies to translate the data into reports that traffic engineers could use to adjust traffic lights or improve roads.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen were high school students at Lakeside School in Seattle. The Lakeside Programmers Group got free computer time on various computers in exchange for writing computer programs. Gates and Allen thought they could process the traffic data cheaper and faster than the local companies. They recruited classmates to manually read the hole-patterns in the paper tape and transcribe the data onto computer cards. Gates then used a computer at the University of Washington to produce the traffic flow charts. (Paul Allen's father was a librarian at UW.) This was the beginning of Traf-O-Data.[2]
The next step was to build a device to read the traffic tapes directly and eliminate the tedious manual work. The Intel 8008 microprocessor was announced in 1972 and they realized it could read the tapes and process the data. Allen had graduated and was enrolled at Washington State University. Since neither Gates nor Allen had any hardware design experience, they enlisted a friend, Paul Gilbert, to build the computer. Gates and Allen started writing the software. To test the software while the computer was being designed, Paul Allen wrote a computer program on WSU's IBM 360 that would emulate the 8008 microprocessor.
The computer system was completed and Traf-O-Data produced a few thousand dollars of revenue. Later the State of Washington offered free traffic processing services to cities ending the need for private contractors. The real contribution of Traf-O-Data was the experience that Gates and Allen gained developing software for computer hardware that did not exist. They would later use this to write Altair BASIC for the MITS Altair 8800 computer and start Microsoft.
[edit] References
- ^ Traf-O-Data. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. Retrieved on 2007-04-30.
- ^ Wallace, James; Jim Erickson (1992). Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire. John Wiley & Sons, pg 42-46. ISBN 0-471-56886-4.
