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Gerald Feldman wrote in a message to Mike Bilow: GF> I would think that you are most probably correct. Like IBM, GF> and the former Soviet Union, Microsoft likes to claim that GF> it invented something when in fact they probably just GF> discovered it. Kind of like Columbus discovering America a GF> few thousand years after the Indians did? I also was in the GF> presence of an IBM executive who made the same claim GF> regarding virtual memory, when in fact IBM was probably the GF> last mainframe manufacturer to actually use it. So, I stand GF> corrected. Actually, the U.S. Patent Office agrees with IBM, having issued 4,730,249. As with many other things, IBM research labs may really have been first, but the commercialization of it was left to others. For decades, IBM had a reluctance to introduce new technology "too quickly" for fear that they would obsolete much of their product line and inventory before either they or their customers could adapt. This fear has proven to have some basis in fact, as shown by the way that PC hardware decreases in value to worthless in three years. It is also worth keeping in mind that the customers for IBM's largest and most powerful machines in the early days of computing were all defense related, and much of the underlying technology was therefore secret. Some of these machines later became publicly known -- such as the "Stretch" which was as far as I know the first machine with virtual memory. -- Mike
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