I learned from a long-retired Microsoft employee about a Company Party that took place around 1984 or so. The company was small enough that a single party could fit the entire company, but not so small that everybody knew everybody else, so each guest was issued a name tag.

During the evening, an unofficial game arose in which people started exchanging their name tags with others whom they met. It also served as a fun little conversation starter: If you swapped name tags with someone and ended up with the tag for somebody you didn’t know, it wasn’t hard to find a mutual acquaintance who could track them down and introduce you.

At one point, the employee who was retelling the story was in a group talking with Bill Gates, who was among the few attendees still wearing their original name tags. Bill spotted that one of the other people in the group had a “Gary Kildall” name tag. I don’t know whether Gary Kildall was actually invited to the party, or that somebody just created a Gary Kildall name tag as a joke. But Bill saw the “Gary Kildall” name tag and eagerly swapped his name tag for it.