When IBM went to license the core patent(s?) from MIT, they offered MIT a choice of a large lump sump (the number US$20M sticks in my mind), or US$.01 a bit. The negotiators from MIT took the lump sum. When I first heard this story, I thought it was corrupt folklore, but I later found it in one of the IBM histories. This story repets itself over and over again, though: one of the Watson's saying there was a probably market for <single-digit> of computers; Ken Olsen saying people wouldn't want computers in their homes; etc, etc. Noel