Did Bill Gates say the 640k line ? February 20, 2007
Posted by Imran Ghory in etymology.trackback
“640K ought to be enough for anybody.” -Bill Gates (1981)
One of the most quoted lines of the computer era. Certainly the most quoted line attributed to the Microsoft founder.
However it is only “attributed” as in 1996 Bill decided to publically deny it in an interview:
INTERVIEWER I read in a newspaper that in 1981 you said, “640K of memory should be enough for anybody.” What did you mean when you said this?
BILL GATES: I’ve said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.
(…)
We at Microsoft disagreed. We knew that even 16-bit computers, which had 640K of available address space, would be adequate for only four or five years.[source]
But I’m not convinced by this denial.
Normally when someone denies saying something they do so fairly soon after the event. This as far as I can find is his first denial of this quote, and is at least four years after the quote was originally popular (usenet posts from 1992 refer to it) and fifteen years after it was allegedely made.
Somehow I find it hard to believe that someone can remember everything that they said 15 years ago. Of course Mr Gates goes on to back up how he never said it by talking about how Microsoft knew back in 1981 (the year the IBM PC launched) that 640k would be too small in 4-5 years.
It’s a pity Mr Gates seems to have forgotten an interview with the Smithsonian just three years prior, in which he talked about how they were surprised when they ran up against the 640k limit in 1986/1987.
BILL GATES: It [640K] was ten times what we had before. But to my surprise, we ran out of that address base for applications within — oh five or six years people were complaining.
[source]
So either Mr Gates has trouble remembering these things or he’s trying to rewrite history to make Microsoft seems more prescient. Which of course he’s never done before.
For a long while this quote was taken as “true”, after the denial it became false. But given the unreliability of Mr Gates claims I think that until someone comes up with some more evidence we should label this quote as having what snopes terms “undetermined or ambiguous veracity.”
Update: from the 1989 interview linked to by Dan Oblak:
BILL GATES:
I have to say in 1981 making those decisions I felt like I was providing enough freedom for ten years, that is the move from 64k to 640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time[source] – quote is at 22:28
Imran On Tech 
Kinda like when Bill Gates said that the Macintosh computer was superior to any other?
I could have sworn that was something up on snopes about this but I can’t find it right off.
lol….not Bill’s finest moment…
denials, denials…
Show me a witness that actually heard him say that and I’ll belive that he did. Otherwise, I have to belive that it is just hearsay.
And either way, who the (bleep) cares!
Let’s presume for a second that he did say the line. It doesn’t say: “640K should be enough for everybody for all time.” It says that at the time that DOS was launched it was expedient and not market-limiting to put a 640K limit on it. Given that DOS was the most successful software product in the world for some time, this assertion would have been totally correct.
But to the more direct question of whether he said it or not. Surely the burden is on those attributing the quote to say where and when he said it.
As Paul pointed out, the quote does not say anything about “for all time” in it. I don’t know what point you’re trying to make, exactly.
I’m old enough to remember when that quote was “known” to have come from the boss of IBM, not the boss of Microsoft. The story remains the same (ie boss of $BIGGEST_EVIL_COMPUTER_CORP says something stupid), only the variable bindings change…
The point is that in more recent interviews, Uncle Bill protests that he ‘never would have said anything like that’; and then in this interview (hear it in MP3 at http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/media/1989%20Bill%20Gates%20Talk%20on%20Microsoft.html), he notes that he did indeed believe that 640K was more than anyone would need for a long time, and then he found out differently by the time he spoke at this event.
This doesn’t answer whether Uncle Bill said the exact words, “640K ought to be enough for anybody.” — but instead that when he protests the quote, he says that at the time of its supposed utterance, he wasn’t thinking like that… but in this earlier speech he contradicts that.
No big deal. Lots of people shoot their mouths off.
This post isn’t about the quote. It’s about the denial of said quote.
It’s childish to deny such a thing, hence it becomes interesting, if only a bit.
It’ll never be proven or not proven though, since nobody cares enough 🙂
(Where’s the edit button?)
I of course mean “proven right or wrong.”
Even if someone, Gates, IBM guy, or whoever, said something like
“640kB ought to be enough for anybody” it would have been in the
context of the time. The original IBM PC only had address lines in
hardware to work with 1024kB of addressable space. Some part
of that space had to be reserved for system use, and the rest would
be available for user space. A decision to take 3/8ths of the space
for system use and leave 5/8ths of the space for users seems to be
“reasonable” enough. It’s easy to visualize the statement being made
in a discussion of whether to allow 512k, 640k, or 768k of the total
available space for user programs. Who cares, really?
¿Dijo o no dijo Bill Gates la frase de los 640k?
Durante un tiempo se hicieron bromas sobre Bill Gates y la frase que supuestamente dijo: "640K deberían ser suficientes para cualquiera". Años más tarde, el propio Gates desmintió haber dicho eso, y desde entonces la frase se considera fa…
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it doesnt matter
I saw it on the internet…it must be true!
I agree with ManiacalMike. At the TIME that Bill would have said that there was really no need for an abundance of memory. So, a few years later someone finds it ridiculous that Bill said something like this, and then starts making a big deal cause that statement became untrue??? Seems to me that it happens quite often unfortunately ….
Earth being flat
Didn’t someone say that there would never be “a man on the moon” …???
I think people should just not worry about it. It’s been taken out of context for too long, and really what is it hurting now???
I though for sure it was 64k this whole time thank you for setting me straight on this me and a buddy were talking about this just the other day.
thanks for the source mate 🙂
looked up in google and got it
Actually the real original quote was “Nobody will ever need anymore than 64k of memory”. This was back in the days when Amiga, Atari and Apple all had at least 256k RAM and PC’s still only had 64k.
thanks for ur matters
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[…] up with evidence—any evidence at all–that Gates said it, I consider him innocent. Although, as this excellent blog post points out, Gates has twice said that he was surprised by how quickly 640K proved to be an inadequate amount […]
If it can be proven that Gates really said this, then I will . . . I will . . . what the difference would it make? Now if he were running for the Senate, that would be a different matter.
ERRATA: My earlier message said what the (bleep) difference would it make, but I used angle-brackets which suppressed the content I guess.
He meant 64k Million Dollars ought to be enough for anybody forever.
I’ve often wondered if he said it or not, too.
The flip side of it all is that human beings have limited intelligence and knowledge and we’re limited by space and time. I am quite sure he didn’t know the PC development would have grown to the level they are today otherwise, no company would be close to Microsoft today.
Well, either Bill Gates did or not, he has used the limitations of his knowledge to amass a stupendous amount of wealth.
Which is really ironic! His “knowledge” was not what made him his great wealth. If that were the case most chimps would be millionaires. No. Mr. Gates used the stupidity of the common consumer to make his wealth. And as the great Albert Einstein once said, “There are two things infinite: The Universe, and Human Stupidity. And I’m not sure about the first…”
@Mike: I don’t see how your statement is related to the article.
Actually it was in a magazine print ad with him holding a pc. I remember it well.
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140 characters ought to be enough for anyone.
–Twitter
[…] $80. Granted, our appetite for data has grown exponentially since the time 640 KB would be “enough“, nonetheless…to quote an old Virginia Slims […]
Don’t u have better things to do then spend time on analyzing a 20 year old quote? Geez…
[…] was too invasive anyway… As I grew older I realised that rather like someone suggesting that 640 KB would be enough memory for anyone my younger self had failed to comprehend the sheer amount of data that would pass through my grey […]
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I took some computer science classes in the late 80’s and early 90’s. The instructor told us this story. I don’t remember it all exactly but it was Gates and CPU manufactures (Intel) in discussion about how much a CPU can address. If they had it address more then they would have to change the CPU and it wouldn’t be compatible with existing software and hardware at the time. In other words they would have to rewrite all the software ever written. Rebuild all the hardware to accept the changes. So you can see why Billy would say 640k is enough.
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It is absolutely true that Bill Gates said the 640K line. The louder he denies it, the more plainly true it becomes. Bill Gates was never a visionary. He was good at maneuvering into position to steal the ideas of others and then dominating the market with shoddy products.
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