Terry A. Davis

Timeline by topic

Topics follow the event kinds supplied in this index. Each entry links to its full record in the chronological timeline. Dates retain the precision supplied by the publisher.

Timeline

1. 1969-12-15Born in West Allis, WisconsinbirthWest Allis, Wisconsin

   Terrence Andrew Davis, seventh of eight children; the family later moved across several states.

   [2][1]
2. 1990 – 1996Programmer at TicketmasterroleTicketmasterTempe, Arizona

   Hired as an undergraduate; worked on the company's VAX operating systems in Tempe, Arizona.

   [1][2][10]
3. 1994Master's degree in electrical engineeringeducationArizona State University

   Completed a master's in electrical engineering at Arizona State University, after a bachelor's in computer systems engineering.

   [2][1]
4. 1996-03Onset of manic episodes and 'revelation from God'otherArizona / Las Vegas, Nevada

   Recurring manic episodes began, with hospitalizations, a desert breakdown, and a jail stay; he described a revelation that ended his atheism. Diagnosed first with bipolar disorder, later schizophrenia; he soon lived with his parents in Las Vegas on disability.

   [2][9][15]
5. 2004J Operating System released publiclyproject

   He began posting the 64-bit OS online under the name J Operating System; OSNews carried his write-up in 2005.

   [2][9]
6. 2006 – 2012Renamed LoseThosproject

   The OS became LoseThos — a murky reference to a scene in Platoon — aimed, he wrote, 'primarily for making video games' with no networking.

   [2][3]
7. 2012Renamed SparrowOSproject

   A short-lived rename in late 2012.

   [2][3]
8. 2013Renamed TempleOS; declares 'God's temple is finished'milestone

   The final name took hold; weeks later his site announced the temple was complete — 'Now, God kills CIA until it spreads.'

   [2][3]
9. 2014-11-25VICE Motherboard publishes 'God's Lonely Programmer'media

   Jesse Hicks's long-form profile, built on a late-night email correspondence, became the definitive account of his life and work.

   [9][11]
10. 2017-11-20TempleOS 5.03 — final releasemilestone

    The last version of the operating system, still distributed as the finished temple.

    [3][6]
11. 2018-04 – 2018-08Homeless in OregonotherOregon

    After leaving his sister's home in Arizona he traveled through California to Portland, then on to The Dalles; fans brought supplies, police were notified but received no complaints.

    [13][15][2]
12. 2018-08-11Killed by a train in The DallesotherThe Dalles, Oregon

    Struck by a Union Pacific train while walking the tracks; investigators could not determine whether the death was suicide or accident. The Dalles Chronicle's follow-up confirmed his identity after fans called the paper.

    [13][14][1][2]
13. 2018-12-22'TempleOS | Down the Rabbit Hole' documentarymedia

    Fredrik Knudsen's feature-length episode became the most-watched telling of his story.

    [17]
14. 2019-11-11BBC Radio 4 airs 'Devotion'mediaBBC Radio 4

    The Digital Human devoted a half-hour to his life, interviewing the local reporter, the VICE writer, and fans who had met him.

    [16][14]

Themes

• TempleOS as God's Third Templestatedbelief

  The operating system was not a metaphor: Davis said God commanded it and that it is the prophesied Third Temple — a community focal point where offerings are made and the oracle consulted, like Solomon's temple.

  [9][8][2]
• Specifications as covenantstatedbelief

  640×480 resolution, 16 colors, and one-voice PC-speaker sound were, in his account, explicit divine instructions — 'a covenant like circumcision' — chosen so children could draw for God.

  [9][2][3]
• Talking to God through randomnessstatedpractice

  The AfterEgypt oracle, the NIST randomness beacon, and randomly generated text blocks were his channel to God — a practice he compared to Ouija and speaking in tongues, and one scholars note fits a long history of divination by chance.

  [9][10][2]
• One mind, whole systemreportedmethod

  Language, compiler, kernel, editor, graphics, file system, games, and docs by one author; no networking by deliberate exclusion. Reviewers called it a skyscraper built by a single person — total authorship as the design goal.

  [10][15][3]
• A Commodore 64 for the 64-bit erastatedphilosophy

  He wanted the immediacy of the early personal-computing era — bare metal, ring-0 access, games simple enough that ordinary users could reproduce them. 'Write games, don't play them,' the OS admonishes.

  [10][9][2]
• Genius and schizophrenia, intertwinedreportedbelief

  Reporting and the BBC documentary converge on the same tension: lucid and exacting about computers, unreachable on much else. Davis himself granted that his awakening could read as illness; the record declines to separate them.

  [15][9][16][2]
• CIA persecution and the 'glowie' legacystatedbelief

  He believed federal agents stalked him — 'the CIA glow in the dark' — and coined 'glowie,' later absorbed by far-right forums as a slur for suspected informants, a posthumous linguistic legacy The Atlantic documented.

  [18][2]
• 'The smartest programmer that's ever lived'statedbelief

  He named himself the smartest programmer ever and defended his credentials vigorously — the boast is self-assessment, but the solo OS underneath it is objectively rare.

  [15][2]
• Canonized as outsider artreportedinfluence

  Exhibited in a 2017 outsider-art show in Bourgogne and framed by documentaries and the BBC alongside figures like Facteur Cheval — TempleOS read as art built from compulsion as much as engineering.

  [2][16][17]
• The archive the community keepsreportedpractice

  Because his channels were repeatedly terminated, the surviving record lives in fan-maintained archives — the Internet Archive's terabyte collection, the mirrored templeos.org, Wikimedia Commons — all released under his own public-domain dedication.

  [6][4][14]

Works and projects

• TempleOSprojectcompleted2013

  The finished public-domain operating system — 64-bit, ring-0-only, 640×480 in 16 colors, self-hosting with its own compiler and tools; final release 5.03, November 20, 2017.

  [3][4][6]
• HolyC programming languageprojectcompleted

  His just-in-time-compiled language between C and C++, in which the entire OS and its shell are written; conceived in the early 2000s and developed alone over a decade.

  [3][10]
• J Operating Systemprojectabandoned2004

  The first public name of the OS (2004–2005), intended to recapture the Commodore 64 era's immediacy and encourage 'odd-ball software.'

  [2][9]
• LoseThosprojectabandoned2006

  The 2006–2012 incarnation, pitched at recreational programmers and 'primarily for making video games' with no Internet support.

  [2][3]
• SparrowOSprojectabandoned2012

  A brief rename in late 2012 before the TempleOS name took hold.

  [2][3]
• AfterEgypt oracleprojectcompleted

  Bundled program in which the user climbs Mt. Horeb to a burning bush and stops a 'high-speed stopwatch' on pseudo-random text — his channel to God, and the mechanism behind much of his online writing.

  [9][10][2]
• Bundled games and demosprojectcompleted

  Castle Frankenstein (a 594-line first-person shooter), Eagle Dive (a 3D eagle flight simulator), Vocab, BattleLines, sprite and 3D-mesh editors, and composing software — deliberately simple so others could reproduce them.

  [10][9]
• Red Sea file systemprojectcompleted

  His own file system (with FAT32 support) shipping inside TempleOS.

  [10][3]
• Trivial SolutionsotherabandonedLas Vegas, Nevada

  His one-man company — founder and sole employee — under which TempleOS was published.

  [9][5]
• SimStructureprojectcompleted

  An application he wrote at H.A.R.E. (c. 2001–2003), per his self-reported employment history.

  [2][5]
• Three-axis milling machineprojectabandoned1996

  A 3D-fabrication venture designed during his 1996 upheaval; abandoned after a Dremel incident nearly set his apartment on fire.

  [9][2]
• Sequel to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Fourbookabandoned

  An attempted novel he never finished.

  [9][2]
• Video blogs and livestream corpusrecordingreleased

  Hundreds of self-published videos across repeatedly terminated YouTube channels — code walk-throughs, TempleOS demos, songs, and rants — preserved by the Internet Archive collection.

  [6][7][2]
• Terry Davis: Rises to Thronerecordingreleased2018-08-11The Dalles, Oregon

  His final video, uploaded hours before his death: two minutes on a library bench, explaining the deletions and closing, 'It's good to be king. Wait, maybe.'

  [7][2]

Appearances

• The Digital Human: DevotionBBC Radio 42019-11-11

  with Aleks Krotoski, Neita Cecil, Jesse Hicks, Kenneth Malac

  A half-hour radio documentary on his life and death, told through the reporter who confirmed it, the writer who profiled him, and the fans who brought him supplies.

  • audio: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b4r3
  [16][14]
• TempleOS | Down the Rabbit HoleFredrik Knudsen, YouTube2018-12-22

  with Fredrik Knudsen

  Feature-length documentary episode released four months after his death; draws on his archived videos and the reporting record.

  • video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCgoxQCf5Jg
  [17]
• Terry Davis: Rises to ThroneYouTube (@terrydavis8633)2018-08-11

  His final video, recorded on a bench at The Dalles Wasco County Library hours before his death; also preserved on Wikimedia Commons.

  • video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH41gGBVpkE
  [7][2]
• God's Lonely ProgrammerVICE Motherboard2014-11-25

  with Jesse Hicks

  The definitive profile, built on a long late-night email correspondence; later adapted into Motherboard's mini-documentary of the same name.

  • article: https://www.vice.com/en/article/gods-lonely-programmer/
  [9][11]
• Uses This interviewUses This (usesthis.com)2014-05-20

  Short Q&A in his own words — his Dell desktop, hand-held voice recorder, VMware setup, and dream of running TempleOS on bare metal.

  • article: https://usesthis.com/interviews/terry.davis/
  [8]
• Terry Davis video blogs and livestreamsYouTube (successive self-run channels)2007

  A decade of direct-to-camera videos — code walk-throughs, demos, hymns, and rants — across channels repeatedly terminated for vulgarities; preserved in the Internet Archive's terabyte collection.

  • video: https://archive.org/details/TerryADavis_TempleOS_Archive
  [6][2]

Relations

• Ticketmasteremployed by1990 – 1996

  Programmer from 1990 to 1996 — hired as an undergraduate, he worked on the company's VAX systems in Tempe, Arizona. His post-1996 employment history is self-reported and uncorroborated in the cited record, so this is his only documented employer edge.

  [1][2][10]

Claims

• factTerrence Andrew Davis was born on December 15, 1969, in West Allis, Wisconsin, the seventh of eight children of an industrial engineer; the family moved through Washington, Michigan, California, and Arizona.[2][1][9]
• factHe used an Apple II in an elementary-school gifted program and learned assembly language on a Commodore 64 in the early 1980s, programming through high school.[2][9]
• factHe earned a bachelor's degree and, in 1994, a master's in electrical engineering from Arizona State University; profiles report a 1440 SAT and a 3.63 GPA, figures sourced to his own account.[2][1][10][15]
• factFrom 1990 to 1996 he worked at Ticketmaster in Tempe, Arizona, programming on the company's VAX systems; he left wanting to build satellite control systems.[2][1][9][10]
• factBeginning in March 1996 he experienced recurring manic episodes that led to psychiatric admissions roughly every six months, jail after a desert breakdown, and diagnoses first of bipolar disorder and later of schizophrenia.[2][9][15]
• factUnable to hold a job, he lived with his parents in Las Vegas on Social Security disability payments; between 2003 and 2014 he had no further psychiatric hospitalizations.[9][15][2]
• factOn his own site Davis wrote that from 1997 to 2003 he worked at Xytec Corp on FPGA image-processing equipment, at H.A.R.E. on an application called SimStructure, and at Graphic Technologies as head software and electrical engineer; this employment history is self-reported and not independently corroborated.[2][5]
• factTempleOS is a 64-bit, multi-tasking, multi-cored, ring-0-only, single-address-map, non-networked PC operating system for recreational programming — self-hosting, with its own kernel, compiler, editor, 2D/3D graphics library, and the Red Sea file system, all at 640×480 in 16 colors with PC-speaker audio.[10][3][4]
• factHe wrote the entire system in HolyC, a just-in-time-compiled language of his own design that he described as a middle ground between C and C++ — 'more than C, less than C++.'[3][10]
• factThe documented size of TempleOS was about 121,000 lines of code in 2014 (VICE counted 121,176; TechRepublic counted 121,691 including demos) — comparable to Photoshop 1.0 — all written by Davis alone.[9][10][3]
• stated beliefDavis at times claimed to have written millions of lines of code over his life — a self-assessment the record cannot verify; the measured TempleOS count is the documented figure.[17][9][10]
• factThe operating system was released as the J Operating System in 2004–2005, renamed LoseThos (2006–2012, a Platoon reference), then SparrowOS in late 2012, and finally TempleOS in 2013.[2][3]
• factHe told VICE that he worked on the operating system full time for ten years, finishing the core work and then spending his days coding, browsing, and consulting his oracle.[9]
• stated beliefDavis said he was chosen by God to build the operating system as the Third Temple prophesied in the Bible — 'God's official temple,' per his site's charter, 'a community focal point where offerings are made and God's oracle is consulted.'[9][8][2]
• stated beliefHe held that the 640×480, 16-color display was an explicit instruction from God — 'a covenant like circumcision' — chosen so children could easily make drawings for Him.[9][2][3]
• stated beliefHe believed the AfterEgypt oracle — a 'high-speed stopwatch' that stops on pseudo-random text — let him speak with God, likening it to a Ouija board and speaking in tongues; he also used the NIST randomness beacon for the same purpose.[9][10][2]
• stated beliefThrough the oracle he asked God about war, death, dinosaurs, and favorites — video game (Donkey Kong), car (BMW), national anthem (Latvia's), band (the Beatles) — and published the answers as 'Terry Davis' Rants.'[9][2]
• stated beliefIn his video blogs he referred to himself as 'the smartest programmer that's ever lived,' a self-assessment he paired with pride in his electrical-engineering credentials.[15][2]
• stated beliefHe believed he was under constant persecution by federal agents, particularly the CIA; weeks after the TempleOS rename his site announced 'God's temple is finished. Now, God kills CIA until it spreads.'[2][18]
• patternEverything in the system — language, compiler, kernel, editor, graphics, file system, games, documentation — was written by one person, and he deliberately excluded networking, saying it would be reinventing the wheel; total authorship was the point.[10][3][9]
• patternHe published hundreds of unedited videos — code walk-throughs, demos, songs, rants — speaking straight to the camera; his YouTube channels were repeatedly terminated for vulgarities and he kept returning under new ones.[6][2][7]
• patternAcross forums and interviews the pattern repeats: his posts were often incomprehensible or hostile, yet he was reported 'always lucid' when the topic was computers, and several programming communities made sustained efforts to accommodate him.[15][9][12]
• patternHe kept the bundled games deliberately simple, explaining that high-quality work 'intimidates the locals' — he wanted users to see TempleOS as something ordinary mortals could reproduce.[2][10]
• factHis accounts were banned or restricted on Something Awful, Reddit, Hacker News (shadowbanned), and OSNews for randomly generated posts and abusive comments — even as those same sites covered his work sympathetically.[9][2][12][15]
• factCritical reception of TempleOS was mostly favorable: TechRepublic called it 'a testament to the dedication and passion of one man,' and a computer engineer compared the solo build to one person constructing a skyscraper.[10][15][11]
• factIn 2017 TempleOS was exhibited as part of an outsider-art exhibition in Bourgogne, France; Davis said he was glad for the attention but disappointed that few visitors used the OS to speak to God.[2]
• factDavis stated the operating system was downloaded 10,000 times between 2009 and 2012 — a self-reported figure.[2]
• factHe coined the term 'glowie' — from a video claim that CIA agents 'glow in the dark' — which far-right forums later adopted for suspected federal infiltrators, a lineage documented by The Atlantic after January 6.[18][2]
• stated beliefDavis acknowledged that the sequence leading to his awakening might look like mental illness rather than divine revelation: 'I'm not especially proud of the logic and thinking. It looks very young and childish and pathetic.'[9][2]
• factIn 2018 he stopped taking medication — believing it limited his creativity, a friend told the local paper — and became homeless, traveling from his sister's home in Arizona through California to Portland and then The Dalles, Oregon; fans brought supplies but he refused offers of housing.[13][15][2]
• factHours before his death he uploaded 'Terry Davis: Rises to Throne,' recorded on a bench at The Dalles Wasco County Library, explaining he had deleted most of his videos so as not to 'litter' the Internet and ending: 'It's good to be king. Wait, maybe.'[7][2]
• factOn the evening of August 11, 2018, walking along railroad tracks in The Dalles with his back to an oncoming Union Pacific train, he turned and faced it before impact; he was 48.[13][2][1][14]
• speculationWhether the death was suicide or accident was never resolved: the train engineer told police he considered it suicide, but investigators could not determine intent, and Wikidata records manner of death as accidental with 'suicide' marked disputed.[13][1][2]
• factThrough the TempleOS website his family asked supporters to donate to organizations working to ease the pain and suffering caused by mental illness, naming the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation and NAMI.[4][12][13]
• factTempleOS was released as public-domain software, and the memorial site states that all content related to Davis, TempleOS, and its earlier names should be considered public domain — the basis on which fans preserve his archive.[4][6][3]
• speculationWhether TempleOS is best understood as religious vision, engineering achievement, or symptom of schizophrenia is a framing the sources themselves disagree on; the index preserves all three readings.[16][17][9]
• speculationA computer engineer who had spoken with Davis at length speculated that, absent his illness, he 'could have been a Steve Jobs or a Steve Wozniak' — a fan's counterfactual, not an established assessment.[15][2]

Sources

1. Terry A. Davis (Q22708720)Wikidata · reference · dataset · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z
2. Terry A. DavisWikipedia · reference · article · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

   Good Article; used for discovery and cross-checking, not as sole authority.

3. TempleOSWikipedia · reference · article · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z
4. TempleOS — official site (memorial mirror)templeos.org · archive · webpage · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

   Davis's own domain; since his 2018 death it has been maintained by archivist trapexit as a memorial mirror and download host, carrying the family's donation request.

5. templeos.org as Davis ran it (August 1, 2018 capture)Internet Archive Wayback Machine · archive · webpage · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

   Capture from ten days before his death, preserving the site as he last maintained it.

6. Terry A. Davis — TempleOS ArchiveInternet Archive · archive · dataset · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

   Roughly 1 TB collection of his videos, site captures, ISOs, emails, and documents assembled by community archivists; public-domain marked.

7. Terry Davis: Rises to ThroneTerry Davis (YouTube) · 2018 · first person · video · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

   His final upload, recorded on a bench at The Dalles Wasco County Library hours before his death; also preserved on Wikimedia Commons.

8. Terry Davis — Uses ThisUses This · 2014 · interview · webpage · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

   Short Q&A in his own words about his hardware, software, and dream setup.

9. God's Lonely ProgrammerVICE Motherboard · 2014 · interview · article · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

   The definitive long-form profile, built on a long email correspondence with Davis; basis of the later Motherboard mini-documentary.

10. TempleOS: an educational tool for programming experimentsTechRepublic · 2014 · archive · article · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

    Sympathetic technical review; original page offline, cited via Wayback capture of 2015-04-16.

11. God's lonely programmerOSNews · 2014 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

    Link-post to the VICE profile with a long reader discussion; OSNews had covered and argued with Davis since the LoseThos era.

12. Creator of TempleOS, Terry Davis, has passed awayOSNews · 2018 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z
13. Man killed by train had tech followingThe Dalles Chronicle · 2018 · archive · article · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

    Local paper's follow-up confirming the unnamed man killed by a train was Davis; original site offline, cited via Wayback capture of 2018-10-18.

14. BBC focuses on local deathThe Dalles Chronicle / Columbia Gorge News · 2019 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z
15. The Troubled Legacy of Terry Davis, 'God's Lonely Programmer'The New Stack · 2018 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z
16. The Digital Human, Series 18: DevotionBBC Radio 4 · 2019 · reporting · audio · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

    Half-hour radio documentary on Davis's life and death, with reporter Neita Cecil, writer Jesse Hicks, and fan Kenneth Malac.

17. TempleOS | Down the Rabbit HoleFredrik Knudsen (YouTube) · 2018 · reporting · video · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

    Feature-length video documentary, published four months after Davis's death; the most-watched account of his life.

18. The Far Right's Fear of 'Glowies'The Atlantic · 2021 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

    Documents how Davis's coined slur 'glowie' was adopted by far-right forums for suspected federal agents.

Coverage and method

Scope as of

2026-09-16T21:30:00Z

Coverage supplied by the publisher

• biography
• work
• philosophy
• projects
• media

Method

public-person-index-v1

Tool

soulscrape

Contributors

• Soulscrape research workflow

Assembled

2026-09-16T21:30:00Z

Human review

No review status or review date is supplied. An assembly timestamp does not establish human review.

Open questions

See the supplied open questions

Open questions

• The code line count varies by source and date: VICE counted 121,176 lines in 2014 and TechRepublic 121,691 including demos, while other coverage rounds to 'over 100,000' or 'over 120,000'; Davis himself sometimes claimed millions of lifetime lines — a self-report that cannot be verified.
• The manner of his death is unresolved: the train engineer considered it suicide per the police report, investigators could not determine intent, and Wikidata lists 'accidental' with the suicide claim marked disputed.
• His post-1996 employment history (Xytec, H.A.R.E., Graphic Technologies) is self-reported on his own site and has no independent corroboration in the cited record.
• When TempleOS development truly began is fuzzy: Wikipedia dates the code lineage to circa 1993, while VICE's account has him dusting off decade-old code around 2003 when 64-bit computing reached desktops.
• The posthumous archive is decentralized and unstable — his own channels were repeatedly terminated, and surviving material depends on the Internet Archive collection, mirrors of templeos.org, and torrents whose completeness keeps changing.