TempleOS was one of the last bizarre wonders of the Internet, a 64-bit operating system made entirely from scratch by one man, Terry Davis, in pursuit of singular religious goals. Davis was mentally ill and died tragically at 43. The BBC's Elizabeth Ann Duffy set out to find out what he made, and what made him: "Perhaps we shouldn't think of TempleOS as a technical achievement, but an artistic one."
When a homeless man was accidentally killed by a train on the 11/08/18 in The Dalles, Oregon, no one realised how many people it would effect. The man was a computer programmer called Terry Davis and he was on a mission from God.
He'd designed an entire operating system called Temple OS and according to Terry its creation had been a direct instruction from God himself. As a fellow programmer explained it, 'you can imagine how over time one man might build a house, but this is like building a sky scraper, on your own!' And this was all done while Terry battled a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Aleks Krotoski searches the emails, web posts and live streams to piece together the life of a remarkable individual who's work touched so many and is now celebrated not just as a technological achievement but an artistic one.
Devotion: artist/illness [BBC]
