Bill Gates

Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975 and led it through the era of MS-DOS and Windows, the period in which this quotation is supposedly set. The 640K figure was a real constraint of the IBM PC’s architecture, which is why the line sounds plausible — but Gates has said the opposite was true, that “the industry went through” pain because of that ceiling and that Microsoft kept pushing the limit up. He has called the quotation a rumour that floats without a citation.