Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder and billionaire investor, dies at 65

They were teenage computer geeks, bespectacled kids from Seattle who taught themselves programming from a Teletype terminal, learned the basics of business from Fortune magazine and dreamed of "a computer in every home and on every desk." Paul Allen was the self-described "idea man," the shy son of librarians. Bill Gates was the business-oriented partner who brought the ideas to life. And in 1975, when Mr. Allen was 22 and Gates was 19, the friends formed a company that became known as Microsoft and unleashed a personal-computer revolution that made both men fabulously wealthy. Mr. Allen left the company after only eight years, amid a bout with Hodgkin's disease and a deteriorating friendship with Gates.