On Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 2:23:42 PM UTC-8, Sportman wrote:
> After studying many inventors of extreme compression algorithms I
> found today this story about Phil Katz inventor of a normal
> compression algorithm. I was surprised that his story is not much
> different then the other inventors I studied.
> The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz
> By Lee Hawkins Jr.
> of the Journal Sentinel staff
> Last Updated: May 20, 2000
> Then he was found dead April 14, Phil Katz was slumped against a
> nightstand in a south side hotel, cradling an empty bottle of
> peppermint schnapps.
> The genius who built a multimillion-dollar software company known
> worldwide for its pioneering "zip" files had died of acute
> pancreatic bleeding caused by chronic alcoholism.
> He was alone, estranged long ago from his family and a virtual
> stranger to employees of his own company, PKWare Inc. of Brown Deer.
> He was 37.
> It was an ignominious end for a man who created one of the most
> influential pieces of software in the world - PKZip - and it
> attracted the attention not only of the techno-faithful but of the
> mainstream press across the nation.
> Katz's inventions shrink computer files 50% to 70% to conserve
> precious space on hard disks. His compression software helped set a
> standard so widespread that "zipping" - compressing a file - became
> a part of the lexicon of PC users worldwide.
> But the riches his genius produced were no balm for what had become
> a hellish life of paranoia, booze and strip clubs. Toward the end,
> Katz worked only sporadically, firing up his computer late at night,
> while filling his days with prodigious bouts of drinking and trysts
> with exotic dancers.
> Katz owned a condominium in Mequon but rarely stayed there.
> Desperate to avoid warrants for his arrest, he bounced between cheap
> hotels near the airport. He got his mail at a Mailboxes Etc. store
> in Franklin.
> "This guy did not have one friend in the world. I mean, a true
> friend," says Chastity Fischer, an exotic dancer who often spent
> time with Katz and was one of the last people to see him alive.
> "Just imagine having nobody in your life. Not anybody to call.
> Nobody."
> High School Outcast
> Phil Katz was a quiet, asthmatic child whose athletic pursuits as a
> kid went no further than riding dirt bikes in his Glendale
> neighborhood.
> A 1980 graduate of Nicolet High School, Katz was a "geek" long
> before that term was linked with dot-com companies and piles of
> money.
> "He was an outcast, definitely someone who was picked on," says Rick
> Mayer, who graduated with Katz. "He spoke in a somewhat nasal tone.
> He was short, and, well I don't want to say homely, so I'll say he
> was plain looking."
> After hearing of Katz's death, Ray Fedderly, a Milwaukee
> cardiologist who sat next to Katz in high school honors math and
> physics classes, opened his high school yearbook and found an
> angst-ridden message.
> "I enjoyed working with you in mathematics and physics classes
> through the four terrible, long, unbearable, tortuous, but wonderful
> years at Nicolet," Katz wrote. "I hope your future is bright and
> your life is happy (if possible). May a calculator bring great
> happiness to you."
> "If I were a physician as I am now when I was 18, I would have known
> what to do with that note," Fedderly says. "I now know that that was
> a call for help. That was not a joke."
> A loner by nature, Katz gravitated to analytical pursuits.
> Katz and his father, Walter, spent weekend afternoons playing chess
> and evenings writing code for programmable calculators in the days
> before PCs forever changed computing.
> Since programmable calculators had very little memory, Phil and
> Walter had to work very efficiently.
> "The earliest program I remember him writing was a game program that
> dealt with landing on the moon," says Brian Kiehnau, Katz's former
> brother-in-law who met him in 1977.
> "It was very crude and simple, but it was complex for what he had in
> terms of hardware. He got real good at optimizing programs, and he
> learned to get the job done with the least amount of instructions
> and running times."
> In 1980, Katz entered the computer science program at the University
> of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Around the same time, Walter and Hildegard
> Katz bought Phil his first computer, an original IBM PC. It had two
> floppy drives, a monochrome monitor and 64K of memory, an
> astoundingly small amount compared with today's machines.
> Once he got the PC, Katz started writing programs, spending most of
> his free time on electronic bulletin board services, the precursors
> of the Internet.
> The services quickly became Katz's social circle, a place where he
> hooked up with others who understood his sophisticated programming
> techniques and shared his passion for computers.
> Gradually, Katz developed a fondness for sharing information on the
> services, since interacting with others helped make his programs
> better. Those experiences would influence Katz to embrace the
> "shareware" approach to distributing PKWare's software. With
> shareware, users try a product, and if they find it valuable, pay
> the person who created it. In the case of PKWare, users paid $47 and
> received a manual and free upgrades.
> "He spent many, many hours talking to people and helping people. He
> would go to computer user groups and spend hours with them,"
> Hildegard Katz says. "He was very, very, giving. This was his great
> love."
> But in the spring of 1981, tragedy overtook the family, and things
> would never be the same for Phil Katz.
> Walter, 55, plagued by recurring chest pains, underwent open heart
> surgery. Within hours, he was dead.
> Phil Katz took his father's death very hard. Years later, in the
> haze of his drinking binges, Katz told Fischer how the loss had
> affected him.
> "It tore him up inside when his father died. One time we went to his
> grave," Fischer says. "He'd always say that when his father was
> alive they'd go fishing and do man things."
> Walter's death drove his son further into solitude and deeper into a
> one-on-one relationship with his computer, say friends and family
> members.
> Writing Programs at Night
> Katz graduated with a computer science degree in 1984 and was hired
> as a programmer for Allen-Bradley Co. He wrote code to run
> "programmable logic controllers," which operate manufacturing
> equipment on shop floors worldwide for Allen-Bradley's customers.
> Katz left Allen-Bradley in 1986 to work for Graysoft, a
> Milwaukee-based software company. He spent evenings holed up in his
> bedroom writing his own programs.
> His project: An alternative to Arc, the then-common program for
> compressing files. Using algorithms, Katz wrote programs that
> imploded information by telling it, for example, to take every
> "a-n-d" out of text. That would eliminate every "and," "hand," and
> "sand." A good program takes out these and thousands of other
> combinations of letters and restores them when needed.
> Katz bounced early versions of the software, called PKArc, off his
> buddies on the bulletin boards and spent countless hours refining
> it. By 1987, the software had created such a buzz online that PKArc
> started to steal market share from Arc's creator, System Enhancement
> Associates of New Jersey.
> "I got a check in the mail and I thought, 'Gee!' that's pretty
> neat," Katz said in a 1994 interview with the Journal Sentinel.
> "Then over the next few months, I got more checks in the mail."
> He turned to his mother for help.
> "People kept calling him saying, 'We would like to use your
> software, and we want to pay you money for it,' " Hildegard says.
> Katz left Graysoft in 1987 to strike out on his own. PKArc's sales
> dwarfed his Graysoft salary, which was in the low-$30,000 range,
> says Steve Burg, a former Graysoft programmer who joined PKWare in
> 1988.
> In the beginning, Katz did most of his work at Hildegard's kitchen
> table. They hired an answering service to handle the flood of phone
> calls, and offered Burg a job as a developer.
> Colleagues were impressed by his intellect.
> "He was extremely intelligent," says Doug Hay, who joined the
> company in 1988 and stayed until June of last year. "He had all the
> equations from exams memorized from 10 years earlier, things you
> generally forget 20 minutes after the test."
> Almost overnight, denizens of the bulletin boards switched from .arc
> compression to .zip in what became known as the arc wars.
> System Enhancement sued PKWare in 1988 for copyright and trademark
> infringement. In 1989, as his legal costs mounted, Katz agreed to
> settle. Full terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but
> representatives of the New Jersey company may have been surprised
> when they finally met their nemesis.
> "The lawyer for System Enhancement showed up at Hildegard's house
> expecting a big company," Kiehnau says. "He had an address from the
> bulletin boards, so he thought there would be a big glass building
> or something. It was really funny."
> Publicity about the lawsuit on bulletin board services nationwide
> helped fuel a backlash against System Enhancement, which accelerated
> the death of .arc as PKWare introduced new, incompatible archival
> tools with better compression algorithms.
> Money poured in.
> "Phil became a very wealthy man in a very short period of time,"
> Burg says.
> While Hildegard worked to keep business matters in check, Katz
> devoted nearly all his time to programming. He didn't come to work
> until late afternoon and worked well into the night, so he could
> have complete silence and not have to interact with anybody, early
> PKWare employees say.
> "He was rarely around. He did what he had to," Kiehnau says. "If the
> business would have went belly up two years after it started, I
> don't think he would have cared."
> But Katz's unpredictable schedule frustrated his family. "They'd say
> 'You have this business, and it's growing. Why aren't you here?"
> Kiehnau says.
> During his frequent absences, Katz kept in touch with Hildegard and
> PKWare executives through electronic fax services. He oversaw
> product upgrades and revisions, and occasionally gave Hildegard
> instructions on business matters.
> As his business grew, his personal life unraveled. Hildegard heard
> rumors her son was going to strip bars, cavorting with women and
> drinking heavily. She questioned him about his personal affairs,
> people who know the family say, and the relationship between the
> worried mom and wayward son began to fray.
> They also squabbled when Katz tried to take money out of PKWare. He
> sometimes wanted as much as $25,000, Kiehnau says.
> "He thought it was ridiculous that a 30-year-old man would have to
> beg his mother for a check from his own company," Kiehnau says.
> Katz grew bitter over his mother's interference in his affairs.
> Eventually, he stopped talking to her altogether. The end came one
> day in 1995.
> Hildegard received a fax informing her that her son planned a
> hostile buyout of her 25% equity stake. He had fired his own mother.
> "It was like a funeral the day it happened," Kiehnau recalls. "It
> was his product, but it was her business. (Kiehnau's former wife)
> Cindi and I got called over to her house and she was crying and
> crying, 'Why would Phil do this?' "
> That same year, Katz hired Robert Gorman as director of marketing
> and sales. Gorman had previously worked in sales for Frontier
> Technologies, a Milwaukee-based developer of Internet software.
> Gorman maintains that Katz continued to manage the company, but
> others close to the situation say Katz's day-to-day role was
> minimal. Although he signed off on major decisions and worked on
> product upgrades, the company was run by PKWare management, they
> say.
> Despite the turmoil, PKWare's business remained strong through the
> 1990s, says Richard Holler, executive director of the Association of
> Shareware Professionals in Greenwood, Ind.
> It is difficult to measure the company's market share because not
> all shareware users end up licensing the product. But even as
> Windows-based "zip" products nibbled into PKWare's sales, the
> company's business held up, he says.
> "They are still a big player in the commercial marketplace. They
> have a lot of ongoing relationships with other software developers
> that use the PKZip compression algorithm within their own products,"
> Holler says.
> At the time of his death, Phil Katz was remembered among the world's
> elite programmers for writing a truly revolutionary piece of
> software. But that single accomplishment, as significant and
> profitable as it was, couldn't save Katz's life.
> Alcohol Takes its Toll
> Katz talked freer, laughed harder, stayed up longer and dreamed
> bigger when he had a drink in his hand, friends say. Drinking
> brought a painfully shy man out of his shell.
> "As soon as he started drinking, you could see a little smile on his
> face. That's when he could talk to people, or tell a joke. When he
> didn't drink, he would pick jokes apart. He would think really deep
> and wouldn't have as much fun," says Fischer, the dancer who met
> Katz in 1994 and grew fond of him.
> But the alcohol was ripping his life from its moorings.
> On May 7, 1991, as he was driving his 1990 Nissan 300ZX with plates
> that read PKWARE, a police officer ordered Katz to pull over. Katz
> was sitting in the driver's seat, his glassy eyes nearly closed,
> according to the police report. He was convicted of operating under
> the influence of an intoxicant.
> It was the first in a torrent of legal troubles.
> About a year later, Katz was again convicted of drunken driving.
> Between 1994 and September 1999, Katz was arrested five times for
> operating after suspension or revocation of his license. Records
> show that courts issued six warrants related to his driving,
> including two for bail jumping.
> Once the authorities starting looking for him, Katz started showing
> up at work a lot less often.
> "He just disappeared," Hay says. "Sometimes you would see him at
> trade shows, but that was about it."
> When Katz did go to work, the strain was evident, former employees
> say.
> "He lived in a state of paranoia," says one former employee, who
> asked not to be identified. "He thought that (WITI-TV Channel 6)
> across the street from us was watching him."
> Katz knew that if authorities were looking for him at PKWare, they
> probably were also trying to find him at the handsome, brown-brick
> luxury condominium he owned near Mequon Country Club.
> His neighbors, unaware of his legal problems, were baffled by Katz's
> reclusive nature. Many say they had never seen or met Katz even
> though he supposedly had lived there for almost five years.
> "I never saw a light on, I never saw tire tracks in his driveway,
> and I live across the street. It was almost spooky," says Peter
> Picus, a neighbor.
> The condominium was in the eye of a publicity storm in August 1997
> after neighbors complained about a stench emanating from the home
> and mice and insects scurrying near the unit.
> Mequon authorities obtained a search warrant to enter the
> condominium, after neighbors and inspectors were unable to locate
> Katz. They found a stinking mass of garbage, sex magazines, videos
> and sex toys like whips and chains, according to Kenneth Metzger,
> former general sanitarian for the City of Mequon.
> "It was a mess. I had been in the business for more than 40 years,
> and it was one of the worst that I had seen," Metzger says. "It was
> knee deep in garbage. There were bottles, cans and rotting fast-food
> stuff all over the place. Whatever happened to that man, he went off
> the deep end."
> Though Metzger and his crew knew little about the evasive Katz, they
> could tell that he was wealthy. Among all the rubbish, they found
> credit cards, money, a laptop computer and jewelry that had never
> been opened.
> Publicity about the discoveries hurt Katz deeply, friends say, and
> some say it marked the beginning of the end.
> "When they raided his house, they exploited it and told everybody at
> his company about his fetish. His mother found out, everybody found
> out," Fischer says.
> "He knew people would jump to conclusions about him," she says. "He
> felt really violated. That's the day he completely stopped going
> into PKWare. He didn't want his personal life mixed in with his
> employees. Nobody really does."
> By this time, Katz's closest acquaintances were the dancers at the
> strip bars he frequented.
> Fischer says Katz showered her and other dancers with gifts, often
> taking groups of them with him to Las Vegas. Several of them
> accompanied him to the 1998 Comdex computer show there.
> "I would sleep with him in the same bed. He never would touch or
> sneak a peek or anything like that," she says. "Sometimes he would
> cry and be like, 'Hold me, Chastity.' You'd just have to hold him
> all night long."
> "There was never anything dirty about him," she says. "He was not a
> pervert. I swear on my Bible. He was the most harmless, most
> generous, unselfish guy I have ever known."
> Some of his stripper friends took advantage of his generosity,
> stealing his credit card numbers and buying things for themselves.
> It intensified his paranoia. Katz began to keep any receipt or piece
> of mail bearing his name or account numbers. He piled it all into
> the back of his 1991 Nissan Pathfinder.
> "That Pathfinder was so disgusting. It literally had no back seat,"
> Fischer says. "It was papers from the ground up."
> Fearful of the arrest warrants, Katz kept on the move. In addition
> to the drunken-driving convictions, he had a half-dozen judgments
> against him from financial institutions totaling more than $30,000,
> court records show.
> Katz hopscotched along a strip of hotels near Mitchell International
> Airport, staying at one for three or four days, then moving to the
> next, usually less than a few hundred yards away.
> "You know what he did? He sat in his hotel room every single day,"
> Fischer says. "The only time he got out of the hotel room was maybe
> to go have dinner."
> Fischer says Katz sometimes called her answering machine late at
> night, pleading with her to join him. During their conversations, he
> sometimes spoke candidly about his family, his company, and his
> childhood, Fischer says.
> He said that his separation from his mother and sister was
> difficult, and that he continued to send Hildegard flowers and
> e-mails, even though they hadn't talked since he fired her from the
> company.
> Through it all, Katz drank heavily.
> Fischer says he drank at least a liter of Rumple minze and two
> bottles of Bacardi rum a day.
> "He would drink until he'd puke. We'd have to see this. I never was
> with an alcoholic where you'd have to see it. After a while it was
> starting to make us sick," Fischer says. "We'd say Phil, you know,
> this is sickening. You're killing yourself, and we're watching you
> do it."
> Hildegard Katz says her son underwent treatment for alcohol abuse.
> "We all tried to help. As with almost any alcoholic, the more you
> tell them to get some help, they begin to isolate themselves because
> they don't want to hear it," Hildegard says.
> "I guess we really thought he turned the corner after he went
> through rehab."
> But he had not turned the corner.
> Fischer says she realized Katz was near the end when she visited him
> at a south side hotel a few weeks before his death. Clad in nothing
> but underwear, he was suffering from uncontrollable hiccups and
> burdened by a horribly swollen stomach.
> "He took some Valium so he could sleep. That was the only time he
> could sleep," she says. "Then he would have the alcohol shakes. I'd
> try to play computer games with him, but he'd run to the bathroom
> all the time."
> "He was so bad to the point where he would start (urinating) in his
> pants involuntarily. His liver was just going. He was puking up
> blood," she says.
> After helping Katz change his pants, Fischer left Katz's hotel room.
> She never saw him again.
> Katz had been dead for two days before his body was found. PKWare
> employees learned of his death almost a week later.
> In the days that followed, the company was flooded with hundreds of
> e-mails offering condolences from software junkies around the world.
> Most had never met Katz but were aware of what he had done. Stories
> of his death were printed in such far-flung media as the London
> Times, the New York Times and abcnews.com.
> But the sadness was deepest for those who had suffered the longest
> as Phil Katz's life came unglued. Hildegard had to make the sad trip
> to identify the son she hadn't seen in five years.
> Later, she reflected on the loss.
> "I get the e-mails people are sending, and it is amazing how many
> people say that even though they never met him or talked to him they
> are ever grateful for what he did. One man said he saved my butt
> many times. Phil was concerned with helping people.
> "It is a tragic waste of such a very vital person, and of his energy
> and abilities."
> Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on May 21, 2000.