Bill_Gates_Biography

William Henry Gates III William Henry “Bill” Gates III was born on October 28th, 1955 in Seattle Washington. He grew up with an upper middle-class family with two sisters: Kristianne (Older) and Libby (Younger). His Dad William H. Gates was a law student when he met his wife Mary Maxwell who was an athletic, outgoing student at the same college, University of Washington. They had three kids, which they pushed and encouraged excellence. He attended Seattle’s Lakeside School which he did very well at. He spent his free time at a computer company working on terminals. He even wrote a Tic Tac Toe program that allowed you to face the computer. He met Paul Allen here, both became friends over their enthusiasm for computers. They had their fights, but ultimately became close, effective, business partners. During their time in high school they wrote lots of programs for computer companies, such as Payroll programs, Computer Privilege programs, and eventually made a program that tracked Internet Traffic all over Seattle which they made 20 grand from. He graduated high school after scoring a 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT test. He was brilliant. He went on to college at Harvard, spending more time in the computer lab than in class. Paul Allen was attending the University of Washington, they both met up in the summer and started developing a Personal Computer with Programs to run it. He started his own company and named it Micro-Soft. (He later dropped the hyphen and made it Microsoft.) Many people illegally distributed his programs to people who didn’t pay for them. But it was okay because he began writing programs for computer companies all over the U.S. and made 2.5 Million that year, he was only 23. IBM was inventing the PC and came to Microsoft to write the programming for it. This was where Microsoft started to rapidly expand not just in the U.S. but all over the world. His company was soon making 16 million a year, with 128 employees. His company kept outworking their competition and kept on expanding, soon Gates became a Billionaire. This didn’t come easy though, Gates worked extremely hard and didn’t sleep much. One morning a Microsoft employee came to work early and found someone sleeping underneath a desk, she was going to call the police but then realized it was Gates! His company split into 2 departments, software development and operating system development. He Invented Windows and was ranked among the wealthiest men in the world. A Microsoft executive Melinda French caught the eye of Bill Gates and they soon got married in Hawaii but only a few months later his mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, which she died from that year, Gates was devastated. Bill and Melinda took some time off in 1995 to travel to several countries and get a new perspective on life and the world. In 1996, their first daughter, Jennifer, was born. A year later, Gates moved his family into a 55,000 sq ft. $54 million house on the shore of Lake Washington. Though the house serves as a business center, it is said to be a very cozy home for the couple and their three children. Bill Gates stepped down from the day-to-day operations of Microsoft in 2000, turning over the job of CEO to college friend Steve Ballmer who had been with Microsoft since 1980. He positioned himself as chief software architect so he could concentrate on what was for him the more passionate side of the business. He still remains chairman of the board. Time magazine named Gates one of the most influential people of the 20th century. The magazine also named Gates, his wife Melinda, and rock band U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year. Here are some interesting facts about Bill Gates: 1. Bill Gates earns US$250 every SECOND, that’s about US$20 Million a DAY and US$7.8 Billion a YEAR! 2. If he drops a thousand dollar, he won’t even bother to pick it up because the 4 seconds he picks it, he would’ve already earned it back. 3. The US national debt is about 5.62 trillion, if Bill Gates were to pay the debt by himself; he will finish it in less then 10 years. 4. He can donate US$15 to everyone on earth but still be left with US $5 Million for his pocket money. 5. Michael Jordan is the highest paid athlete in US. If he doesn’t drink and eat, and keeps up his annual income i.e. US$30 Million, he’ll have to wait for 277 years to become as rich as Bill Gates is now. 6. If Bill Gates was a country, he would be the 37th richest country on earth. 7. If you change all of Bill Gate’s money to US$1 notes, you can make a road from earth to moon, 14 times back and forth. But you have to make that road non-stop for 1,400 years, and use a total of 713 BOEING 747 planes to transport all the money.