William Henry "Bill" Gates III was born in 1955 in Seattle.He grew up in an upper middle-class family with two sisters: Kristianne, who is older, and Libby, who is younger. His father was a prominent lawyer and mother served on the board of directors of national bank.He was excellent in all subjects at school.
At Lakeside School which he attended, a Seattle computer company offered to provide computer time for the students. That 's where his interest in computers and programming started.The very first computer program he created was an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer and he was just 13 years old.He studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including programs in fortan, Lisp, and machine languageOne time he rewrote the school's computer program to schedule students in classes.
He modified the code so that he was placed in classes with mostly female students.As young teenagers Bill Gates and Paul Allen ran a small company called Traf-O-Data and they sold a computer program to the city of Seattle that could count city traffic. They netted $20,000 for their effort.Bill Gates graduated in 1973.
He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT[19] and joined the Harvard CollegeIn his junior year, Gates left Harvard to devote his energies to Micro-Soft, a company he had begun in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. He never returned to finish his studies.While at Harvard, Gates developed a version of the programming language basic for the first microcomputer - the mitsAltair.Microsoft's basic was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked into the community and was being widely copied and distributedMicrosoft became independent of mitsin late 1976 and it continued to develop .In 1980, IBM approached Microsoft to write the BASIC interpreter for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC.
Gates proposed using 86-DOS (QDOS), an operating system which Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC.Microsoft made a deal with SCP to become the exclusive licensing agent, and later the full owner of 86-DOS. They didn't told them about the IBM deal they made.After they adapted the operating system for the PC, Microsoft delivered it to IBM as PC-DOS in exchange for a one-time fee of $50,000 which was the same price he had paid for the software in its original form.The SCP later sued Microsoft and Gates for withholding important information. Microsoft settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.
IBM wanted to buy the source code but Gates refused, instead proposing that IBM pay a licensing fee for copies of the software sold with their computers.The sales of MS-DOS made Microsoft a major player in the industry.Between 1978 and 1981, Microsoft's growth exploded, and staff increased over 100. In mid-1981 Gates and Allen incorporated Microsoft, and Gates was appointed president and chairman of the board. Allen was named executive vice-president.Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows in 1985In 1987, Bill Gates became a billionaire when the stock raised to $90.
75 per share. Since that year Bill Gates has been on the top or near the top of Forbes' 400 list of the world's wealthiest people.Bill Gates was gaining a reputation as a ruthless competitor. Several tech companies led by IBM began to develop their own operating system called OS/2 to replace MS-DOS.In 1989, Microsoft introduced Microsoft Office which bundled office productivity with applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel into one system that was compatible with all Microsoft products.
The applications were not as easily compatible with OS/2.Microsoft's new version of Windows sold 100,000 copies in just two weeks and OS/2 soon faded away.This left Microsoft with a virtual monopoly on operating systems for PCs. Soon the Federal Trade Commission began to investigate Microsoft for unfair marketing practices.In 1990 Microsoft headed by Bill Gates created a new version of Windows called Windows 3.0 with a much improved GUI and features which sold more than 10 million copies, quickly followed by Windows 3.
1, 3.11 ,marketing boom with windows 95 followed by windows 98, 2000, Millennium Edition ,Windows XP, Windows Vista and and the current version of Windows 7.Each new windows release has seen Microsoft gain more market share and along with their popular applications such as Office, games .In 1999, Gates's wealth briefly surpassed $101 billion, causing the media to call him a "centibillionaire".[54]Bill Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in 2000.
His last full-time day at Microsoft was in 2008. He remains at Microsoft as non-executive chairman. Microsoft had revenues of US$ 51.12 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2007, and employs more than 78,000 people in 105 countries .Personal life and some interesting factsGates married Melinda French in 1994. They have three children.
According to King County public records, as of 2006 the total assessed value of his property (land and house) is $125 million, and the annual property tax is $991,000. His 66,000 sq. ft. estate has a 60-foot swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a 2500 sq. ft.
gym and a 1000 sq. ft. dining room.[49] Gates was number one on the "Forbes 400" list from 1993 through to 2007 and number one on Forbes list of "The World's Richest People" from 1995 to 2007 and 2009.
In March 2010 Bill Gates was dropped down to the 2nd wealthiest man.Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one. Bill Gates
