William H. Gates Biography

William H. Gates commonly known as Bill Gates was born in oct 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington, USA. He grew up in Seattle. He went to Lakeside School in North Carolina. He met a guy called Paul Allen, who was his senior, but they have common interest about the computer stuffs. They used to do a lot of stuffs in the school’s computer lab. Bill even hacked into the system to change his class schedule. In 1973, He entered Harvard as freshman intending to become a lawyer, but he was interested in programming stuffs. In 1970, at the age of just 15, Bill Gates and Paul Allen went into business together, developing a computer program called "Traf-o-Data" that monitored traffic pattern in Seattle. They got $20000 for their effort.

He developed a programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer- the MITS Altair during his college. Later, in his junior year, he dropped out of Harvard to give his time to a company called Microsoft, accompany he had started in 1975 with his friend Paul Allen. He has the vision that there will be personal computers everywhere in future- in office, home, schools, factories, etc. Basically, his vision was to use computers for real jobs like using it to make office works easier, solving the problems, managing the documents, keeping records, etc. That vision led him to build the software for the personal computer. In 1980s, IBM was the leading company for manufacturing Pc and the software contract was given to Microsoft. More the PCs produced more the license of Microsoft’s Operating system called Basic were sold. There were many companies producing clones of the IBM PC which will also need to buy license for Microsoft’s operating system.

Thus, the Microsoft was able to gain dominant position in the software industry. Th products build by Bill Gates and his team such as word, excel, etc. has become industry standard. Microsoft released its first version of Windows in 1990. It was a breakthrough in operating software as it replaced text interfaces with GUI (Graphical User Interface) and we are still using the GUI. It soon became a best seller and was able to capture most of the operating system market share. Windows 95 was released in 1995, setting new standards and features for operating systems. This version of Windows has been the backbone of all future releases from Windows 2000 to the latest XP and Vista. Bill Gates served Microsoft as CEO from 1975 to 2000 and later served as product software architecture. He resigned from Microsoft in 2014. Although He resigned from Microsoft he keeps on meeting with CEOs and product managers.

In 1995 Gates with Co-author Nathan Meyerhold, Microsoft's chief technology officer, and Peter Rinearson wrote The Road Ahead, his vision of where information technology will take society. The book held the No. 1 spot on the New York Times' bestseller for a total of 18 weeks. The book has published in different countries around the world inspiring the technologist enthusiasts. He was even awarded with different honors and awards such as "Youngest Self-made billionaire", President Medal of Freedom in 2016, etc. He was made honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005.

I think the contribution of Bill Gates is important in industrializing and making the personal computer a reality. He is the one who brought the personal computer thing to home otherwise computers may be limited to the offices and workplace. The Microsoft made the operating system available to third party which helped computers to be popular around the world.

Bill and Melinda established a Foundation called Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 which is the largest private foundation in the United States, holding US$50.7 billion in assets. He has given a lot of his assets to help solve different types of problem such as polio, diarrhea, nutrition, sanitation, education, etc. around the world. He is still actively involved in philanthropy and making a lot of change in the world.

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