After graduating from the University of Washington, Kildall became interested in the emerging technology of microprocessors while teaching at the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey. In 1973 he developed both the first microprocessor programming language PL/M for Intel and the microcomputer operating system CP/M. He founded Digital Research, Inc., with his wife to market the latter, which by 1980 had become the most de facto standard operating system for the 8080 and Z80 processors. However, in that year Kildall famously failed to secure the contract to provide the operating system for the forthcoming IBM PC in circumstances that are still unclear. Kildall continued to develop new products, but Digital Research’s dominance ended following the IBM PC’s success with MS-DOS and it was bought by Novell in 1991.