Terry A. Davis

Meet the man in the photo: Terry Davis. His full name was Terrence Andrew Davis. He was an American electrical engineer and programmer, best known for his most famous project, TempleOS.

Who he really was

Terry Davis was born on December 15, 1969, in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. From childhood he was interested in computers. He studied electrical engineering at Arizona State University and earned a master’s degree in 1994.

Mental illness

Starting around 1996, Terry began to experience mental changes, and because of these episodes he was frequently admitted to psychiatric units. It was during this period that he started talking about things like “cosmic beings” and “government agents.”

Once, believing that his car radio was “talking” to him and that there were hidden cameras inside his car, he dismantled the entire vehicle into parts.

At the hospital, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Later he lived with his parents in Las Vegas and began receiving disability benefits. Schizophrenia affected his communication: his speech became difficult to follow, and he often talked to himself. But when the topic was computers, he could focus completely, hold a clear conversation, and answer questions well.

TempleOS

Terry developed the TempleOS computer operating system entirely by himself over 10 years. He said the reason he worked on it was that God had chosen him as His programmer and told him to create a divine operating system.

Terry would do live streams on YouTube, writing the system’s code during the broadcast. For his operating system, he created a C-like programming language called HolyC, which he described as a divine programming language—“God’s programming language.”

TempleOS technical features

1. 64-bit system
2. Non-preemptive multitasking: the system doesn’t “forcefully interrupt” tasks to switch between them (a simpler approach to multitasking)
3. Multi-core: supports multi-core processors
4. Public domain and open-source
5. Ring-0 only: security and isolation mechanisms are not like those in traditional operating systems
6. No networking (it does not connect to the internet)

Graphics features:

1. 8-bit ASCII text
2. Built-in 2D/3D graphics libraries
3. 640×480 VGA, 16 colors

File systems:

1. ISO 9660
2. FAT32
3. RedSea (developed by Davis himself)
4. File compression support

Terry explained the operating system’s limitations as “God’s commandments.” Terry Davis wrote more than 100,000 lines of code for TempleOS.

Death

Terry A. Davis died at the age of 48 on August 11, 2018, in The Dalles, Oregon, after being struck by a Union Pacific train while walking along railroad tracks. It is not clear whether it was suicide or an accident.