CP/M and Digital Research Inc. (DRI) History

Introduction Dr. Gary Kildall's operating system called CP/M is likely 35 years old as of 2009. That is based on a "fall of 1974" reference by Kildall to get Dr. John Torode to provide a working floppy controller to run his software on real hardware. During 1975 there were announcements and discussions of CP/M as a product in a new but popular computer magazine called "Dr. Dobb's Journal". Dr. Kildall and his company, Digital Research Inc., sold CP/M and subsequent operating systems and development tools into the 1990's, until the company was acquired by a series of other companies. As of 2006 the current owners of the DRI licenses including CP/M is DR-DOS Inc. Kildall died in 1994.