William Henry Gates III, the co-founder of Microsoft, was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. His father, William Henry Gates Sr. was a lawyer while his Mother Mary Maxwell was executive for a bank.
Early Life:
He had two sisters, elder sister Kristianne and a younger sister Libby. Gates was a voracious reader. At the age of 13, he attended Lakeside School, where he had his first introduction to computers. He programmed Tic-Tac-Toe a basic computer language to play games. Gates met his future partner Paul Allen at this School, who was two years senior to Gates. They developed the “Traf-o-Data” traffic monitoring computer program in 1970 when Gate was just 15. They earned $20,000 from this program. He graduated from Lakeside School in 1973.
Graduation:
Gates scored 1590 out of 1600 on the college SAT and enrolled at Harvard. He studied mathematics and computer science at Harvard, but he was dropped out of college in 1975 before he could finish his course.
Foundation Of Microsoft:
Gates and Allen started working with Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry System (MITS) to develop BASIC software to run the Altair computer. Gates and Allen together founded Micro-soft, a blend of Micro-computer and software. After a year, they dropped the hyphen, and Micro-soft becomes Microsoft.
Rise Of Microsoft:
In 1980 IBM approached Microsoft for building an operating system for their new computer. This proved a significant breakthrough for Microsoft. Just as the personal computer market started to boom, Microsoft gained the dominant position of software manufacturer by selling its software to many companies.
In 1990 Microsoft released their operating system, the first version of Windows. The second version, Windows 95, was released in 1995. Windows 95 proved to be the backbone of future releases such as Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Vista. The latest version is Windows 10, available in the market.
Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation:
In 2000, Gates left the position of CEO of Microsoft turning the job to a college friend Steve Ballmer. He founded the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation in the year 2000 reported being the largest private foundation in the world. In 2006 Bill Gates announced transitioning from full-time work to give more time to his foundation. June 27, 2008, was his last full day at Microsoft. He stepped down from the chairman of Microsoft in February 2014.
Bill Gates Family:
Bill found his perfect match, a 23-year-old Microsoft product manager Melinda French in 1987 when he was 32 years old. They both got married on January 1, 1994. Jennifer, their first daughter, was born in 1996, son Rory in 1999, and second daughter Phoebe in 2002. Bill Gates is currently the second richest person in the world, making $127 per second, according to THE STREET. Bill Gates lives in a 55,000 square-foot house, having worth of $54 million built-in 1997 on the shore of Lake Washington.