Bill Gates and Microsoft
Just past 9 PM on
October 28, 1955, the man who would revolutionize the
computer industry as we know it, was born. The son of Bill Jr.
and Mary Gates was named William Henry Gates III. The
computer super-genius was soon to take his place in history.
Within the last fifteen years the company that he and Paul
Allan started, Microsoft, has become the largest software
corporation in the computer industry. What is Bill Gates’
background, and how did he preserve his place in history
while amassing his fortune? Bill Gates grew up in a typical
wealthy family. His father, Bill Gates Jr., was a lawyer in
Seattle, Washington. His mother was a socialite housewife
and occasional teacher. Growing up, Bill Gates’ nickname
was "Trey." This nickname was indicative of the III after his
name. This nickname has stayed with him throughout his life
to date (Wallace and Erikson 10). Bill also grew up as a
middle child between his two sisters. His older sister is named
Kirsti, and his younger sister’s name is Libby (Sihvonen 3).
Bill Gates attended Lakeside School (an expensive private
school in Seattle) as a child. Bill Gates was first introduced to
computers as a student at Lakeside School. A company called
Computer Center Corporation (referred to as "C-cubed" by Bill
Gates) leased computers from Digital Equipment Corporation.
In 1968, the board of Lakeside School decided to provide a
computer (a GE PDP-10 connected via Teletype at the
school), and computer time for their students (Wallace and
Erikson 26). Almost instantly, Bill and a handful of fellow
students were addicted to the new computer. Within a year,
Bill Gates, Paul Allan, and two other students of Lakeside
School formed the Lakeside Programmer’s Group. At the age
of 13, Bill Gates had already constructed an application
(program) that played tic-tac-toe. Later, the Lakeside
Programmer’s Group developed an application called
Traf-O-Data. This was a program that would calculate the
number of cars traveling down a road, and would give the
best timing for a stop light. C-cubed used Gates and his
friends to try and hack items, but Gates was often scolded for
hacking too much. Unfortunately, in 1970, C-cubed went out
At just twenty years old, Bill Gates cofounded Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen. He is now the richest man in the world with over $85.2 billion to his name. So why did Microsoft end up being way more successful than any computer program like it? The answer is because of the free enterprise system, and competition. Gate's product was considered new and innovative at the time, which made customers want to try it out.
After having helped found what would be the world’s most popular and largest software company in 1975, Bill Gates officially found himself to be the richest man alive at the ripe, young age of only thirty-one. Gates had never imagined that the thirteen year old boy who loved to program computers in his parent’s garage would one day find himself to be considered the world’s wealthiest man alive, having a total net worth of $76 billion. Having began on his own, tinkering with computers and computer software, Gates later created the seed of Microsoft, or what was originally called Traf-O-Data in the summer of 1972. (Fast Facts) It wasn’t until two years later, with the help of his co-founder, Paul Allen that Microsoft was born, transforming the technological world in ways that the people had never seen. The birth of Microsoft changed the ways of old computers, making way for faster newer and more innovative technology, along with bringing on a strong competition with their rival company, Apple Inc. With this grand cooperation, Bill Gates was also accumulating a large mass of money, gradually finding himself to top the charts of the Forbes World Billionaires List. (Fast Facts) Despite being well known for his contributions to Microsoft, Bill Gates’ most profound impact on the American culture was in medical and educational advances provided by The Gates foundation, paralleled by his philanthropic views and aid in the lives of the both poor and wealthy.
Bill Gates He is the richest man in the world. His former friends, who are now
only used by big business and the government to a small box used by ordinary
The first major task Seattle Computer threw at Paterson was building an operation system for their new computer; the CP/M. Paterson was a little hesitant at first in creating such a program but he put up to the challenge. "I had always wanted to write my own operating system. I’ve always hated CP/M and thought I could do it a lot better." Little did he know before he started the project that he was about to create the "the world's most widely used computer program."
In the same year, John von Neumann created a calculating machine which very powerful for the time. The machine was built in order to perform calculations for the Manhattan Project. But before it was used there, it was tested by implementing an algorithm for playing a simplified variant of the game (6x6 board without bishops, no castling, no two-square move of a pawn, and some other restrictions). The machine played three games: it beat itself with white, lost to a strong player, and beat a young girl who had been taught how to play chess a week before (7).
This was the same year when Bill Gates and Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft. In 1981, Bill Gates’ company was hired to develop an operating system but rather than creating a new operating system they decided to buy a preexisting operation system called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) for the amount of 50,000 dollars. After modifying the operating system they bought, they renamed the operating system to MS-DOS. After MS-DOS began selling it brought in a steady income for Gates due to the fact that the PC market was growing and there weren’t many competitors in the market for them to compete with. In 1986, when Microsoft Corporation went public, it made Gates into a millionaire overnight. The following year, Microsoft released their first ever version of
Microsoft is a computing software company. Microsoft was made and founded on April 4th 1975 by two young men who were captivated by computers. Their names were Bill Gates and Paul Allen. The homebase was in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft became one of the most famous and successful companies in the world. “Microsoft was one of the pioneers responsible for bringing the personal computer into the lives of millions of people.” (Musolf). The company has had such a great impact that now the name “Microsoft” is now virtually synonymous with computer software.
...ere are gears used to select which numbers you want. Though Charles Babbage will always be credited with making the first “true” computer, and Bill Gates with popularizing it, Blaise Pascal will always have a place among the first true innovator of the computer. There is even a programming language called Pascal or Object Pascal which is an early computer program.
Bill was born on October 28th, 1955 his parents are William H. Gates Sr and Mary Maxwell Gates. Since he was a child he was interested in computers. “His education started at a local private school known for tough academic standards. When he was first introduced to computers he would skip class to work with the machine. After getting in trouble he gave up computers to focus on education for a year. He dropped out of harvard after his sophomore year because of his success with computers”(Mcguire 1). He was so interested in computers he dropped out of Harvard one of the best schools in America to pursue computers. Due to all of Gates knowledge on computers he was easily able to get a job “Gates' first professional job came soon after he and his computer friends wrote The Problem Report Book, a 300-page manual they compiled after going through the garbage bins of Seattle's Computer Center Corporation (CCC) and finding all the programmers' errors. CCC officials were so impressed with the boys that they gave them jobs”(Mcguire 1). Gates was easily able to get a job by just finding errors in a computer software because of how much he knew about computers. Bill Gates past knowledge of computers helped him become who he is
Gates was born to the full name of William Henry Gates III on October 28th 1955 (Bellis). Gates was born to two sisters, Libby who is younger and Kristianne who is older. William Henry Gates III got his name from his father William Henry Gates Sr., Gates Sr. fell in love with Mary Maxwell at the University of Washington. Gates grew up in a very loving family; him as well as his sisters were pushed to do well in school. The most important person he had growing up, was his Mom. She had a love for charity work, and would take Gates with her to help out. He would later credit his love for philanthropism to his mother (Bill… Biography). Although Gates had a loving and somewhat ordinary family, what he would do was far from ordinary.
There per 1947, when the transistor was invented, and when Jaquard (1804) designed a loom that performed predefined tasks through feeding punched cards into a reading contraption; nobody imagined how quickly that it would take to get the nowadays supercomputers. Resources http://www.thocp.net/software/software_reference/introduction_to_software_history.htm http://www.softwarehistory.org/index.html http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/mooreslaw.htm http://www.libredebate.com/doc/doc199911070002.html http://www.elrinconcito.com/articulos/cibernetica/cibernetica.htm http://www.salon.com/tech/special/opensource/ http://www.ciberperiodismo.net/gorka/noticias/63/notiimpr
It was at Lakeside that he was first introduced to computers. In the spring of 1968 the Lakeside Prep School concluded that it should acquaint the student body with the world of computers. They were still too large and costly for the school to purchase it's own, so instead they had a fund raiser and bought computer time on a DEC PDP-10 owned by General Electric. A few thousand dollars were raised which the school figured would buy more than enough time to last into the next school year. But they had drastically underestimated the amount of students that would be addicted to this machine.
While Bill Gates was at junior high a group of parents raise money to purchase the first computerized terminal in the school. When that happened he decided to take all his time to work on that system teaming with other students to learn about different operating systems. He excelled in his learning of systems and he started developing ideas to make business with companies in order to learn how they make their terminals. His mind for busi...
Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975. Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite and Internet Explorer web browser. It is also one of the world's most valuable companies. Microsoft dominated the personal computer operating system market, until the early 2000 when Apple, Google, and Facebook came about. (Microsoft) This is when the company started to lose its credibility.