NE #3:
640K of memory
are
enough
Part 3 of the Nerd Encyclopedia about an alleged quote from Bill Gates….
This statement probably belongs in every well-maintained computer science seminar: Bill Gates was apparently subject to the mistaken belief that 640 KByte of RAM would be enough for computers. We all know that even our refrigerators need many times that amount.
Bill Gates is said to have uttered this controversial bon mot as early as 1981, and it is still circulating on the Internet and in ominous IT lectures. However, almost 15 years later, Gates explained that the statement did not come from him at all. His explanation makes perfect sense: The IBM PC that was released at that time could be equipped with up to 640 KB of RAM. Did it ever happen that software developers were satisfied with the given resources? Pushing technical limits is THE challenge of all in IT. So one can assume that Gates was rather of the opposite opinion [GO1]:
“Do you realize the pain the industry went through while the IBM PC was limited to 640K? The machine was going to be 512K at one point, and we kept pushing it up. I never said that statement — I said the opposite of that.”
Bill Gates to Bloomberg Business News, 1996
But where does the alleged quote come from? A first reference can be found in the magazine “InfoWorld” of April 29, 1985 [INFOW1] — however without reference to an interview that may have taken place:
Als wir die Obergrenze von PC-DOS auf 640K festlegten, dachten wir, dass niemand jemals so viel Speicher benötigen würde.
William Gates, Vorsitzender von Microsoft in InfoWorld, 1985
Apart from the dubious context, this statement is also far from: “640 Kbytes are enough”. The same magazine published a similar quote a few years later — but again without reference to the context, such as an interview: “640K ought to be enough for anyone” — Bill Gates, InfoWorld, 1990.
Just under five years later, the Washington Post picked up the statement as part of a collection of quotes entitled “If They Only Knew.” It said that Gates made the statement in question in 1981.
A cascade of references followed, such as in the book “The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation” with a reference to the Washing Post [QUOTE1].
So the evidence is relatively thin not to say contradictory. The research blog Quote Investigator has investigated the truth content — and gives sufficient reason for skepticism [QUOTE1]. Nevertheless, the rumor persists; the computer magazine chip still believed it in 2016 [CHIP1]:
