Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,327

This is the grave of Paul Allen.

Born in 1953 in Seattle, Allen didn’t grow up super rich or anything. His father was a librarian. But they did manage to send him to a private school (of course; the early 60s version of Maddie and Connor–Linda and James let’s say–couldn’t be with THOSE kids) and there he met another young geek named Bill Gates. They became best buds. This was the dawn of the computing era and these young kids were all in.

I am not even going to attempt to describe early computing. I am sure that plenty of LGM commenters can provide this kind of thing in the comments. I don’t have the first bit of understanding of this stuff. But then there’s hardly any reason to really provide a biography of Allen since everyone basically knows the history of Microsoft, which is what the history of Allen mostly is about. But a few notes. By the time both were teenagers, they were already savants at computing. They somehow convinced the University of Washington’s Computer Science department to let them use their machines, but then were kicked out in 1971 for totally abusing their privileges. Gates went off to Harvard and Allen was off to Washington State. Not sure why WSU, maybe money. In any case, while Allen got a 1600 on the SAT, he really had very little interest in school. He dropped out and took a job in Boston with Honeywell,. While there, he convinced Gates to drop out of Harvard and for the two of them to found Microsoft.

The great what if of modern New Mexican history is what would have happened if Microsoft had stayed in Albuquerque, where it was initially located, instead of moving to Seattle. They founded it there in 1976, after Allen had already moved there to work for Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems. I doubt if it would have worked large-scale; it took a lot of water for early computer manufacturing and Albuquerque didn’t exactly have it. However, understand that the largest New Mexico-based corporation today is a convenience store chain. To have a major economic engine would have completely transformed New Mexican history. Instead, it ended up transforming Washington history when they moved back home in 1979. The reason was clear enough–top flight talent were a lot less excited about living in Albuquerque than they were about living in Seattle. So it was a solid enough business decision. Still sucked for New Mexico.

Anyway, I hardly have to tell anyone here that Microsoft proved to be exceptionally successful. In fact, while it completely transformed the computing industry, it was also one of the now iconic corporations, also including Nike, Amazon, Starbucks, and others, that transformed the Pacific Northwest, turning it from a natural resource-oriented economy to a tech and tourism economy. Soon, those trees and fish had more valuable being alive than dead and that would frame modern Northwest history, which is the subject one of the books I am writing and theoretically (?) will finish someday. Allen was a critical figure in this.

Allen and Gates could get cranky with each other. Allen did have other interests. Gates did not. Gates thought he was working harder. Allen disagreed. They fought a lot. Then in 1983, Allen got diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, his first battle with cancer. At that point, he mostly dropped out of the active running of the company and lived off his massively valuable shares. When the company went public, Allen was immediately worth $2.2 billion after resisting Gates buying him out. Later, they repaired their relationship and got on pretty well, probably because Allen was now happy to take a back seat.

So for the rest of life, Allen could play. And play he did. He liked sports and bought the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers, who happen to be my NFL and NBA team. Am damn glad he did too. The Seahawks were threatening to move to Los Angeles under the ownership of the vile Ken Behring. Allen kept them in Seattle. People have long speculated about the Blazers moving because of their small market and inability to attract free agents due to being White Paradise, Oregon in a Black sport. Allen was not the most active owner of the Blazers and there were some mistakes along the way there, but he spent money and kept them competitive for a long time. In fact, the Blazers have had very few really terrible periods of failure in my life, even if they haven’t won a title in my memory. Allen deserves his share of credit for that.

Allen also liked rock and roll and so he created the what was originally the Jimi Hendrix Museum in Seattle, which later became the Experience Music Project and now the Museum of Pop Culture. The thing about the EMP/MPC that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame completely misses is that it is fun. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is not.

Like a lot of these billionaire types, Allen was really into space too. Private space travel seems pretty dumb to me but then I don’t know why we are sending people back to the moon either. And then he just did billionaire things–gave money to charity, supported environmental causes (wildlife conservation especially), etc. He funded research into brains, he endowed a library at the University of Washington in honor of his father, he started a little film company, he gave a bunch of money to fight Ebola, he was super into finding sunken ships. Again, rich people things.

I don’t really have anything too awful to say about Allen, unlike most billionaires. I guess the reason for it is that he made his money very young and then just stepped back and enjoyed life. Probably if I kept digging, I could find some bad things. But no, most of the bad things are about his awful sister Jody, who inherited the money after Paul died. She is a completely disinterested owner in the Seahawks and Blazers. Worse, if she’s famous for anything, it’s for importing illegal ivory from Africa and for sexually harassing her underlings. She is the privileged awful scumbag billionaire who did literally nothing for her wealth except be close to her unmarried brother. If Paul Allen had one huge weakness, it’s in trusting his awful sister.

But Allen had his cancer and it came and went over the years, finally taking him out in 2018. He was 65 years old.

Paul Allen is buried in the unmarked mound next to his parents in Acacia Memorial Park, Seattle, Washington.

If you would like this series to visit other people involved in American computing, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Grace Hopper is in Arlington and Claude Shannon is in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.