Bill Gates
William Henry Gates was born on 28
October 1955, in Seattle, Washington. As the principal founder of Microsoft,
Bill Gates is one of the most influential and richest people on the planet.
Recent estimates of his wealth put it at US$84.2 billion (Jan. 2017); this
is the equivalent of the combined GDP of several African economies. In recent
years he has retired from working full time at Microsoft, and has instead
concentrated on working with his charitable foundation “The Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation.”
His father William Gates Sr was a senior lawyer,
and his mother, Mary, served as an executive for a major bank. The family were
wealthy but, remembering the challenges of the Great Depression, they
encouraged their children to work hard and take nothing for granted.
Aged 13, Gates attended the private Lakeside school.
It was here that Gates had his first introduction to computers. He taught
himself to programme in Basic, making a simple ‘Tic-Tac-Toe’ game. Gates
enjoyed the process of working with computers and arranged with a company
Computer Center Corporation (CCC) to spend time on their computers – learning
source code, such as Fortran, Machine Code and Lisp.
In 1973, Gates enrolled at Harvard, where he studied
mathematics and computer science. However, Gates was more interested in
pursuing his own coding, and when he saw an opportunity to found his own
company, he dropped out of Harvard without finishing his course.
Bill Gates founded Microsoft in 1976 when he formed a
contract with MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) to develop a
basic operating system for their new microcomputers. In the early days, Bill
Gates would review every line of code. He was also involved in several aspects
of Microsoft’s business such as packing and sending off orders.
The big break for Microsoft came in 1980 when IBM
approached them for a new BASIC operating system for its new computers. In the
early 1980s, IBM was by far the leading PC manufacturer. However, increasingly,
there developed many IBM PC clones; (PCs produced by other companies compatible
with IBM’s). Microsoft worked hard to sell its operating system to these other
companies. Thus Microsoft was able to gain the dominant position of software
manufacture just as the personal computer market started to boom. Since its
early dominance, other companies have struggled to displace Microsoft as the
dominant provider of computer operating software. Programs like Microsoft Word
and Excel have become the industry standard.
In 1994, Bill and Melinda
Gates established the William H. Gates Foundation, which was dedicated to
supporting education, world health and investment in low-income communities. Gates
continues to devote much of his time and energy to the work of the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation. The organization tackles international and domestic
issues, such as health and education and helping students in the United States
become college-ready.
