Bill Gates

Bill Gates

The American Entrepreneur, philanthropist and one of world’s richest people, Bill Gates is the former chief executive and current chairman of Microsoft, the giant of computer software companies.

Bill Gates was born on 28th of October 1955 in Seattle, Washington, in a well-educated family of entrepreneurs. Gates wrote his first computer software at the age of thirteen. His school purchased a ‘Teletype Model 33’ and a ‘General Electric’ or ‘GE’ computer. The GE computer caught Gates attention and he produced an application of the game ‘tic tac toe’ where the computer was your opponent. He offered to find bugs in the Computer Center Corporation software along with his friend Paul Allen, who later became the co-founder of Microsoft. Realizing his exceptional abilities in programming, Gates was hired to work for Information Sciences, Inc.

After graduating high school in 1973, he achieved an extraordinary score of 1590 out of 1600 in his SAT’s. He became a student at Harvard in 1973 where he continued to exhibit his remarkable skills in programming. After he developed the programming language ‘BASIC’, gates wanted to do more so he contacted MITS who had created the latest microcomputer. The company hired him and Paul Allen who named their team Micro-Soft. After a year of working together the name was changed to ‘Microsoft’.

Microsoft also created an operating system named 86-DOS for IBM which made Gates one of the key players in the computer industry. Although the system had IBM’s name on it, Gate’s share in its creation was obvious to the press. By 1981 Gates was President of Microsoft and Chairman of the Board. The first version of Microsoft Windows was launched in November 1985 after which Microsoft started its journey of success and has been moving forward ever since, revolutionizing the world in both work and recreation. Gates announced his transition to part time work at Microsoft in June 2006 effective June 2008 which was his last full time day there.

Bill Gates has played a major role in this success not only because of his strategic thinking and outstanding talent but also his passion and strong determination. Gates dominated the computer industry because he saw things other players in the game just couldn’t. In an interview to Fiona Bruce from BBC for ‘The Money Programme’ he said that that it wasn’t just what Microsoft did, but what his rivals didn’t do.

Gates remained the world’s wealthiest person from 1995 to 2009 (except 2008) but recently the philanthropist has been going down on the list because of his generous donations to charities. He is the co-founder of the ‘Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’ which is known as one of the most transparent charitable organizations of the world.

Gates was named as one of the ‘100 people who most influenced the 20th century’ and one of the ‘100 most influential people’ of 2004, 2005 and 2006. He was also the Time’s ‘Person of the Year’ in 2005 for his humanitarian efforts. He has also received several honorary doctorates. Gates was made an honorary ‘Knight Commander or the Order of the British Empire in 2005.

Bill Gates has not only brought success to Microsoft but has contributed so much more to the world with his innovative ideas and the desire to achieve his goals.