Life and Deeds of Bill Gates

Childhood

William Henry Gates the third was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle Washington. William Henry Gates, more commonly referred to as Bill Gates, was born into an upper-middle class family with 2 sisters. One older, and one younger. As a young kid, he was very competitive and enjoyed games. Monopoly was one of his favorites and he is all time favorite was Risk. He enjoyed reading lots and lots of books when he was younger too. He especially enjoyed encyclopedias (which is kind of weird but okay) and he read the entire thing when he was only 7 years old. He did very well in school but around age 11-12 Bill seemed very bored with his work. This was a huge struggle for him as he started to lose interest in school and in 13, he enrolled in a private school, which he liked better, and he excelled at math and science. And this is where his love for computers grew, the school had a teletype terminal and got answers from an actual computer. Which where the size of rooms at the time.

Early Adulthood

In early adulthood, Bill enrolled in Harvard, only to drop out later. Yes, Bill Gates one of the richest men in the world was a Harvard dropout. He also had a 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT, which is completely insane. He dropped out in 1975 after 2 years there. He originally went to Harvard for law school. Hover, he spent more time in the computer lab then in class, and this made him want to start a computer software company. Prior to going to college, he and Paul Allen started a company and they netted 20,000 dollars from it. They re-joined together after they dropped out of college to form Micro-soft in 1975. By 1979 the company earned over 2.5 million per year. Bill also placed himself at the head of the company.

Big Break

Bill was inspired to become successful by his own personality. He is always striving to become better at what he does, and he is very competitive. Their big break was in the late 60s when he made a program called Traf O Data which measured traffic flow in Seattle. This earned him and his friend Paul Allen 20,000 dollars. This helped start them off. Then in 1979, they formed Micro-soft. They were able to sell their software quickly and by 1979 they were making millions per year, the same year that they founded the company! Bill had to go back to college after founding Microsoft, because his parents didn’t want him dropping out of college. However, he was not focused on school. His next leave from Harvard would then be permanent. Bill had dropped out of college which was very hard for him.

Success

Bill Gates built upon his success in many ways, as he is now a billionaire, and Microsoft is a massive company. His small system got a contract from IBM which was a huge accomplishment for small Microsoft. The company's size grew as well. He had 500 employees in 1983 and could no longer remember everyone’s name. Bill kept working as hard as he could and coming out with new inventions, like windows. In fact, Bill was a very active boss. In 1985, windows came out with a mouse that was revolutionary. However, this caught apple’s attention and tried to sue them. However, Microsoft won in court. Bill Gates also helped invent the PC, which most everyone has at home now. Microsoft has also created game consoles, like the Xbox.

Good Deeds

Bill Gates is a very big philanthropist after his mother. His mother was very involved in charity until her death. His wife Melinda also likes charity. They agreed to give away 95% of their wealth. That is quite a sum of money. He founded the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation which he has donated billions to. He has also vaccinated many poor people to keep them from getting sick.

Demuth, Patricia B., and Who Hq. Who is Bill Gates? Penguin, 2013.

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