Timeline on Bill Gates

William H.Gates born on October 28th in Seattle, Washington. He had two sisters and parents who were very involoved in business and politics.

At thirteen, Gates enrolled at Lakeside school, a very strict private school. Here he encountered computers for the first time and fell in love when his school purchased a small amount of "computer time", as it was very expensive. Obtaining computer time became the main goal of Gates and his best friend, Paul Allen.

Over the next few years, Gates and Allen worked at a local business on the computer. They looked for bugs, and taught themselves everything they could about computers. Along with two other boys, Gates and Allen called themselves "Lakeside Programming Group." The "Lakeside Programming Group" prove to be very successful, and Gates was the undisputed leader. The group started programming codes and such for different companies, and made reasonable amouonts of money.

Gates and Allen enrolled at Harvard University to study mathematics and law. He and Paul Allen were walking around Harvard Square one day when they saw a magazine with a picture of the Altair on it, a computer you could assemble yourself, invented by MITS.  Gates and Allen decided they would attmept to write some software for MITS's Altair, as it was their dream in high school to be able to really program and wirte codes for a computer. Gates contacted Ed Roberts, head of MITS Altair computer company, and Roberts liked the idea.

MITS' Altair computer

After six weeks of work, Paul and Bill completed the programming. They presented the BASIC program running on the Altair to MITS in their headquwarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (BASIC is a simple form of computer language codes, and it is still used today). Although all the program could do was announce its prescense on the computer, it was clear the possiblities were endless. Allen was offered a job at MITS for this, and he took it. Gates went back to school for a while, but then also began working at MITS.

Gates and Allen founded the Microsoft Corporation in Albuquerque. Microsoft sold BASIC softwares and systems to different companies such as MITS, Intel, and NCR. It was cheaper for these companies to buy software from Microsoft instead of writing their own.

Gates and Microsoft's other sixteen employees moved to Seattle, Washington. Here, Gates thought it would be easier to recruit more programmers. Gates only wanted the best and brightest working in Microsoft.

Gates (bottom left), Allen (bottom right), and other Microsoft employees in 1978.

This expanision of personnel led to the creations of Microsoft Word and a Microsoft spreadsheet program. Gates also purchased the SCP-DOS operation system from Seattle Computer Products, later changing it to MS-DOS. Gates then made a deal with IBM to write an operating system for its new line of personal computers, and MS-DOS was soon on all new IBM PC's. Microsoft made several other technological breakthroughs throughout the 1980's.

In April, Microsoft intorduced the "mouse," a revolutionary idea. Also, in November of 1983, a graphical interface called Windows was brought into existence.

On March 13, Microsoft went public on the stock exchange. The first offering for one share of Microsoft stock was $21.00. Bill Gates instantly became a millionaire. At the age of thiry-one, Gates became the richest person in the U.S.A.

After receiving excellent reviews for Windows 3.0 in 1990, Gates was awarded the National Medal of Technology from President George Bush in June, 1992.

Gates and his wife, Melinda Gates

On January 1st, Bill Gates married Melinda French, who was also a marketing manager from Microsoft. They were married in Lanai, Hawaii. On April 26th, the same year, Bill and Melinda became the proud parents of Jennifer Katherine Gates He later had two more children.

DID YOU KNOW? Gates loves to play golf, play bridge, and read.

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