This is the man who, when he wanted good looking typesetting for the second volume of TAOCP, spent over a decade making TeX to do that with. Of course he would

This is the man who, when he wanted good looking typesetting for the second volume of TAOCP, spent over a decade making TeX to do that with. Of course he would stop and build a computer first. And universities where people would read his books, banking and mail institutions to send people checks through after they report bugs, and so on. One needs to have some preconditions in place first, obviously.