In the beginning, there were switches and lights....
And, "Bill Gates and Paul Allen came up with an idea even stranger and more fantastical: selling computer operating systems." is false. IBM had been selling operating systems for years, thanks to one of the consent decree. (This let Amdahl and the first clone makers concentrate on building hardware and ignore software.) Moreover, Gates almost certainly knew that IBM sold operating systems.
I doubt that IBM was the first to sell operating systems, and if it was, I seriously doubt that Microsoft was the second.
And, "Bill Gates and Paul Allen came up with an idea even stranger and more fantastical: selling computer operating systems." is false. IBM had been selling operating systems for years, thanks to one of the consent decree. (This let Amdahl and the first clone makers concentrate on building hardware and ignore software.) Moreover, Gates almost certainly knew that IBM sold operating systems.
I doubt that IBM was the first to sell operating systems, and if it was, I seriously doubt that Microsoft was the second.