Bob O'Rear

Robert (Bob) O'Rear is a former employee of Microsoft, and is among the group of twelve Microsoft employees who posed for a company photo in 1978. A native Texan, he has degrees in mathematics and physics. He left Microsoft in 1993, and reportedly owns a cattle ranch in Texas. His net worth is reported to be about $100 million.

Early life

Bob O'Rear, born in Wellington, Texas, was brought up in a rural town of 3,500 people in Texas Panhandle by his grandparents, who were sharecroppers on a cotton farm. Bob planned to be a physical education teacher, but later ended up graduating from the University of Texas at El Paso with a bachelor's degree in mathematics[1]. He went on to graduate school to study maths and astrophysics.

In 1966, TRW in Redondo Beach hired Bob to work on Air Force spy satellite programs that determined which photographs were taken and how. He also wrote programs that optimized the trajectory of Minutemen missiles during the Cold War. Later on, in the 1960s, he went to work for NASA. He helped write a program that determined the trajectory of the Apollo Command Module as it reentered the Earth's atmosphere, and was in the NASA Command Center when Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon.

Later in the 1970s, Bob and his friend from his TRW days found a company called Texametrics that made automated machinery for the manufacturing extrusion business for polyurethane bottle caps. Bob worked on a program which analyzed the patterns of correctly manufactured caps and caused the incorrectly manufactured parts to be ejected. During this time, Bob worked with both hardware and software that helped him later when he joined Microsoft.

Microsoft

Bob first joined Microsoft in 1977 and became the seventh employee. He went to work as the company's chief mathematician and project manager[2]. He learned how programs were put together and also reworked some of the math code in them. After the success of the MS-DOS and the IBM PC, Bob O'Rear became the director of international sales and marketing. Bob is considered one of the key people in Microsoft's history and success.

IBM PC and MS-DOS

Bob O'Rear was the project leader and sole programmer in bringing up the first MS-DOS on the IBM PC. Microsoft reached an agreement with Seattle Computer Products to acquire marketing rights for 86-DOS. 86-DOS had been built to work on the Intel 8086 so it would work on the IBM PC's Intel 8088 which used the architecture and instruction set of the 8086, but a slower and less expensive 8-bit external data bus. Work began as soon as the first prototype of the IBM PC was received in Thanksgiving of 1980. Work was very grueling as there were both hardware and software problems and IBM was not always there to answer questions. It was finally released in 1981 and its success made Microsoft a Fortune 500 company.

Retirement

Bob O'Rear retired from Microsoft in 1993. Bob started a ranch in the Texas Panhandle where he grew up with his brother. While Bob provides the financing and business structure, his brother runs and operates the ranch. He spends more time with his family and pursues his hobbies- golf, racquetball, and skiing. Bob is also a director on several boards of local businesses and invests in real estate development. Just before his retirement, he joined the advisory council on the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas, his alma mater, through which he keeps a working relationship between the university and Microsoft by encouraging recruit students from the university.

Bibliography

Tsang, Cheryl D.. Microsoft First Generation. Canada: John Wiley & Sons inc., 2000.

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