Computer engineer and entrepreneur, born in Seattle, Washington, USA. At age 15 he constructed a device to control traffic patterns in Seattle, and in 1975 co-wrote a compiler for BASIC and interested the MITS company in it. He dropped out of Harvard in 1975 to spend his time writing programmes. In 1977, he co-founded Microsoft to develop and produce DOS, his basic operating system for computers. When in 1981 International Business Machines (IBM) adopted DOS for its line of personal computers, his company took a giant step forward; by 1983 he had licensed DOS to more than 100 vendors, making it the dominant operating system. By age 35 he had become one of the wealthiest men in America, and by the late 1990s, the wealthiest. In 1998 the government sued Microsoft for alleged anti-trust violations (see Microsoft entry). Well known for his donations to many charitable causes, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was established in 2000 to improve global health and education. He received an honorary knighthood in 2004.
William Henry Gates III|
Bill Gates at IT Forum in Copenhagen, Denmark, November 16, 2004, photo by Kees de Vos |
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| Born: |
October 28, 1955 (age 51) Seattle, Washington, USA |
|---|---|
| Occupation: | Chairman, Microsoft |
| Salary: | US$966,667 |
| Net worth: | 7.5% to US$53.0 billion (2006) |
| Spouse: | Melinda Gates |
| Children: | 3 |
| Website: | microsoft.com/billgates Gates Foundation |
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington) is the co-founder, chairman, former chief software architect, and former CEO of Microsoft. According to the Forbes 2006 magazine, Bill Gates's current net worth is approximately $53 billion.
Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Since amassing his fortune, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, founded in 2000.
Early life
William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington to William H. Gates, Jr. (now Sr.) and Mary Maxwell Gates. Gates has one older sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates III or "Trey" because his father had dropped his own "III" suffix. According to the 1993 biography Hard Drive, Maxwell set up a million-dollar trust fund for Gates the year he was born. Gates vehemently denied this in a 1994 interview with Playboy, and the 1993 biography Gates calls the trust fund claim one of the "fictions" surrounding Gates' fortune.
Gates excelled in elementary school, particularly in mathematics and the sciences. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest.
At the end of the ban, the Lakeside students (Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans) offered to fix the bugs in CCC's software in exchange for free computer time. Rather than use the system via teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, not only in BASIC but FORTRAN, LISP, and machine language as well. Gates also formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor.
According to a press inquiry, Bill Gates stated that he scored 1590 on his SATs.
Microsoft
After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Gates contacted MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with Allen at MITS, and they dubbed their partnership Micro-Soft.
Anti-piracy efforts
In February 1976, Gates published his often-quoted "Open Letter to Hobbyists". In the letter, Gates claimed that most users were using "stolen" pirated copies of Altair BASIC and that no hobbyist could afford to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software without payment.
Microsoft and IBM
In 1980 IBM approached Microsoft to make the BASIC interpreter for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC. When IBM's representatives mentioned that they needed an operating system, Bill Gates referred them to Digital Research, makers of the widely used CP/M operating system. When IBM's representatives did not reach immediate agreement with DR, they went back to Gates to ask about alternatives. Gates offered to provide a CP/M-compatible operating system; Gates never understood why DR founder Gary Kildall had not shown more interest, and in later years claimed that Kildall capriciously "went flying" during the IBM appointment, a characterization that Kildall and other DR employees would deny.
Windows
See also: History of Microsoft WindowsIn the early 1980s Microsoft introduced its own version of the graphical user interface (GUI), based on ideas pioneered by the Xerox corporation, and further pioneered and developed by Apple.
By continuing to ensure, by various means, that most computers came with Microsoft software pre-installed, the Microsoft corporation eventually became the largest software company in the world, earning Gates enough money that Forbes Magazine named him the wealthiest person in the world for several years. Gates served as the CEO of the company until 2000, when Steve Ballmer took the position, and continues to serve as chairman of the board as of November 2006. Microsoft has thousands of patents, and Gates has nine patents to his name.
Bill Gates' role
Since Microsoft's founding in 1975 and as of 2006, Gates has had primary responsibility for Microsoft's product strategy. Microsoft case, Gates gave deposition testimony that several journalists characterized as evasive. Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance were directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of e-mail Gates both sent and received.
Despite denials by Bill Gates, the judge ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization and tying, blocking competition, in violation of the Sherman Act.
Gates meets regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers. On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his day-to-day role over the next two years to dedicate more time to philanthropy.
Personal life
Bill Gates married Melinda French of Dallas, Texas on January 1, 1994. They have three children: Jennifer Katharine Gates (1996), Rory John Gates (1999) and Phoebe Adele Gates (2002). Also among Gates' private acquisitions are the Codex Leicester and a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci which Gates bought for USD $30.8 million at an auction in 1994.
Gates's e-mail address has been widely publicized and he received as many as 4,000,000 e-mails per day in 2004, most of which were spam. Gates says that most of this junk mail "offers to help [him] get out of debt or get rich quick," which "would be funny if it weren't so irritating."
Wealth and investments
Gates has been number one on the "Forbes 400" list from 1993 through to 2006 and number one on Forbes list of "The World's Richest People" from 1995-2006 with 50 billion US dollars.
Gates has several investments outside Microsoft.
In May 2006, Gates said in an interview that he wished that he was not the richest man in the world, stating that he disliked the attention it brought.
Philanthropy
In 2000, Gates founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charitable organization, with his wife. In 2000, the Gates Foundation endowed the University of Cambridge with $210 million for the Gates Cambridge Scholarships. According to a 2004 Forbes magazine article, Gates gave away over $29 billion to charities from 2000 onwards.
On June 16, 2006, Bill Gates announced that he would move to a part-time role with Microsoft (leaving day-to-day operations management) in 2008 to begin a full-time career in philanthropy, but would remain as chairman. Days later Warren Buffett announced that he would begin matching Gates's contributions to the Foundation.
Publicity
Awards and recognition
Time Magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005 and again in 2006. Gates and Oprah Winfrey are the only two people in the world to make all four lists. Time also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts. In 2006, Gates Foundation was awarded the Premio Príncipe de Asturias en Cooperación Internacional. Gates was listed in the Sunday Times power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by Time in 1998, ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999 and was included in The Guardian as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001.
Gates has received three honorary doctorates, from the Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands in 2000, the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden in 2002 and Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan in 2005. Gates was also given an honorary KBE (Knighthood) from Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom in 2005, in addition to having entomologists name the Bill Gates flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honor.
The Gates received the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation on May 4, 2006, in recognition of their world impact through charity giving.
Popular portrayals
Gates is often characterized as the quintessential example of a super-intelligent "nerd" with immense power and wealth. This has in turn led to pop culture stereotypes of Gates as a tyrant or evil genius, often resorting to ruthless business techniques.
Works
Gates has published several essays throughout the years based on his theories, predictions and visions of the computing industry. Some of his publications since 1997 include:
Person of the Year, Time, December 2, 2005 The New World of Work, Executive E-mail, May 19, 2005 The PC Era Is Just Beginning, Business Week, March 22, 2005 Building Software That Is Interoperable by Design, Executive E-Mail, February 3, 2005 The Enduring Magic of Software, InformationWeek, October 18, 2004 Preserving and Enhancing the Benefits of E-mail: A Progress Report, Executive E-mail, June 28, 2004 Microsoft Progress Report: Security, Executive E-mail, March 31, 2004 Losing Ground in the Innovation Race?, CNET News.com, February 25, 2004 A Spam-Free Future, The Washington Post, November 24, 2003 Why I Hate Spam, The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2003 Building Trust in Technology, Global Agenda 2003 (World Economic Forum), January 23, 2003 Security in a Connected World, Executive E-Mail, January 23, 2003 The Disappearing Computer, The World in 2003 (The Economist), December 2002 Slowing the Spread of AIDS in India, The New York Times, November 9, 2002 Trustworthy Computing, Executive E-Mail, July 18, 2002 Computing You Can Count on, April 2002 Tech in a Time of Trouble, The World in 2002 (The Economist), December 2001 Moving into the Digital Decade, October 29, 2001 The PC: 20 Years Young, August 12, 2001 Why We’re Building .NET Technology, June 18, 2001 Shaping the Internet Age, Internet Policy Institute, December 2000 Now for an Intelligent Internet, The World in 2001 (The Economist), November 2000 Will Frankenfood Feed the World?, Time, June 19, 2000 Yes, More Trade with China, Washington Post, May 23, 2000 The Case for Microsoft, Time, May 7, 2000 Enter "Generation i", Instructor, March 2000 Product Distribution Goes Digital, IEEE Internet Computing, January 2000 Beyond Gutenberg, The World in 2000 (The Economist), November 1999 Everyone, Anytime, Anywhere, Forbes ASAP, October 4, 1999 The Second Wave, IEEE Internet Computing Magazine, August 18, 1999 Microprocessors Upgraded the Way We Live, USA Today, June 22, 1999 Why the PC Will Not Die, Newsweek, May 31, 1999 The Wright Brothers: The 100 Most Important People of the Century, Time, March 29, 1999 Compete, Don't Delete, The Economist, June 13, 1998 Who Decides What Innovations Go into Your PC?, 1997
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