Documented path
Born June 1, 1956. Graduated Ingraham High School (Seattle) 1974; University of Washington computer science magna cum laude 1978. Joined Seattle Computer Products as designer/engineer ~age 22; designed hardware including Microsoft's Z-80 SoftCard; wrote QDOS in 1980 when CP/M-86 was delayed for SCP's 8086 boards.
Born 1956; Seattle high school and University of Washington CS (1978); joined Seattle Computer Products as young engineer.
Programmer known as creator of QDOS/86-DOS that became MS-DOS; later Microsoft engineer and independent developer; living computing-history figure.
Where the conditions came from
Each is placed on a −1 to 3 scale from documented evidence, and the three are never added together. A combined total would rank Tim Paterson against other people. Held apart, they explain why this path ran differently from another one—which is the only comparison this project supports.
The marble itself
+2Tailwind
What capability, drive, or early skill is documented in the person rather than their surroundings?
University of Washington CS magna cum laude. Self-taught electronics from father, designed hardware and wrote QDOS at age 24. Strong systems ability evidenced by creating the OS that became MS-DOS, but not prodigy-level.
Where it was dropped
+2Tailwind
What money, family standing, network, or permission was already in place before the work began?
Father was an electrical engineer who provided early exposure to electronics at home. Seattle-area middle-class family with direct domain overlap in engineering.
The shape of the track
+2Tailwind
What place, timing, institution, or peer group made the next step available?
Seattle Computer Products provided the 8086 hardware platform need. Roommate's IMSAI 8080 and retail computer store job gave early PC exposure. Seattle at the dawn of the PC era with Microsoft nearby.
A −1 is a documented headwind, not a missing value; a 0 means the sources record nothing notable either way. Annotation confidence: High. These are analyst readings of what the sources record, not measurements of merit, talent, or effort. The twenty-two scored dimensions remain available inside the deeper research detail.
What moved through the conditions
This records repeated behaviour or recovery described by sources; it is not a grit or merit score.
A successful-only archive cannot recover all encounters, avoided setbacks, or alternative outcomes.
Strongest documented signals: Direct domain exposure, Elite institution pipeline, Frontier geography.
Describes the starting position, not what the person later made of it.
Strongest observed levers: Domain proximity, Prior reps, Scarce skill depth.
Measures what was present, not whether it was inherited, earned, self-built, external, or mixed.
The timeline below shows the sequence of work and transitions around the selected early milestone. It is evidence of a path, not proof that every step was necessary.
Dominant figure at the top of a field. The tier summarizes documented career recognition through the data cutoff—not Tim Paterson's worth or future potential.
Question four · where did the leverage come from?
Each non-zero lever gets a best-supported origin, evidence signals, and confidence. Unresolved is the honest default when the biography cannot distinguish self-built, advantage-enabled, earned, external, or mixed.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
A structural wave is external to the person, even when their position improved access to it.
No current annotation distinguishes self-built, enabled, or earned origins for this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
This is a bounded inference from the current annotations—not a claim about private effort, merit, or the percentage of Tim Paterson's outcome attributable to any origin.
Structural luck, Encounter luck, Event luck, Outcome variance can change every arrow in the path. This successful-only dataset cannot observe the near-identical paths that did not break through, so luck stays visible and unscored.
Multiplying capacity documented later in the path. Measures what was present, not whether it was inherited, earned, self-built, external, or mixed.
Access or conditions documented near the beginning of the path. Zero means "no clear evidence in reviewed sources," not "advantage was absent."
Seattle-area upbringing; detailed family financial/professional background not richly documented in reviewed sources.
Not documented in reviewed sources.
Paterson's QDOS at 24 is one of the clearest ≤26 systems-software milestones of the PC era. Built alone at a small Seattle firm to sell 8086 boards; Microsoft's purchase made it the foundation of MS-DOS. Later Microsoft career and MSX-DOS work followed.
advantage confidence: High · source count: 3 · audit: source_verified · status: subagent_researched_beta