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    Founded by four University of Washington computer experts in the fall of 1968 with the backing of several Seattle investors, Computer Center Corporation was a private Seattle firm offering the largest concentration of timesharing computer power on the West Coast. The company (which Gates referred to as “C-Cubed”) had leased several computers from Digital Equipment Corporation, including a PDP-10 like the one Gates and the other Lakeside students used.
    Computer Center Corporation attempted to sell its timesharing services to scientific and engineering businesses in the region—or any other customer in need of computer power at an affordable price.
    One of the firm’s founders and chief scientific programmer, Monique Rona, had a son in the eighth grade at Lakeside—the same grade as Gates. She knew about the school’s teletype machine and its deal with General Electric for computer time. A representative from her company contacted Lakeside to inquire whether the school would be interested in making a similar arrangement with Computer Center Corporation. The students would have an even greater opportunity to learn about computers, the representative argued.
    Lakeside concurred, and once again asked parents to help pay for the computer time used by their sons.
    Gates and some of the other boys soon discovered all kinds of “neat” programs hidden in the C-Cubed PDP-10 software— programs they had not encountered with the General Electric computer. One trick the boys learned was something called “detach and leave job running.” This meant that even though they were logged off the system, the machine was still working on their program . . . and keeping a record of the computing time used. Computer bills soon ran into the hundreds of dollars.
    “These kids were very hungry for time,” recalled Dick Wilkinson, one of the partners who organized Computer Center Corporation. “Every time we would get a new version of software, they would go poking around in the system, and we would have to forgive some bills because they would be running programs they were not supposed to. They found chess on the system, when they should not have. So they would play a half game of chess, and then leave the Lakeside terminal and go off to class or something. They didn’t understand they were using computer time like it was going out of style.”
    The electronic mischief eventually got out of hand. Gates and a couple other boys broke the PDP-10 security system and obtained access to the company’s accounting files. They found their personal accounts and substantially reduced the amount of the time the computer showed they had used. They were quite proud of this ingenious accomplishment—until they got caught.
    Wilkinson drove out to Lakeside for a talk with Fred Wright, the math teacher in charge of the school’s computer project. Like naughty boys, Gates and the others were marched into the principal’s office.
    “We told them they were off the system for six weeks,” Wilkinson said, “and if we caught them on it we would call the police, because what they were doing was illegal. They were all very contrite. They were pretty good kids from then on.” Gates became even more of a problem for Computer Center Corporation shortly afterward. The very first BASIC program Gates wrote using the PDP-10 computer at C-Cubed was called “Bill.” The next time Gates dialed up the computer and tried to load his program, however, the system crashed.
    Gates tried it again the next day. “New or old program?” the computer asked via the teletype machine.
    Gates punched out the answer on the teletype keyboard: “Old program.”
    The computer then asked, “Old program name?”
    Gates punched out the answer: “Old program name is Bill.” Bam! Just like that, the system crashed again. Gates attempted to load up his program several times over the next few days, and each time the G-Cubed computer would break down.
    This was not good