Who is Bill Gates?
October 1955 Bill Gates is born
Shortly after 9 PM in Seattle Washington,
William (Bill) Henry Gates III was born to William H. II and Mary Maxwell Gates.
His unique brainpower and curiosity for technology were discovered early in childhood.
January 1967 Bill Gate’s education
Gates is enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive private school in Seattle,
where he befriends Paul Allen. Bill Gates and Paul Allen
both share an interest in computers and programming.
June 1969 First Computer Program
Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC. At age 13,
he wrote his first computer program on a computer,
which was an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer.
February 1973 Enrols in Harvard University
After graduating from Lakewood School, being National Merit Scholar and scoring
1590 out of 1600 on the SAT, Gates gets enrolled in Harvard University where he studied
pre-law influenced by his father. But later his focus is shifted toward computers and programming.
May 1975 Calls MITS for a job
Bill Gates signs up for a job with MITS from his dorm room to develop software for the MITS
Altair starting his journey of programming. He later marks his first absence from school,
dropping out in the same year to start working on the software venture he refers to as Micro-Soft.
May 1976 Registers Microsoft trademark.
Gates and Allen register the trademark “Microsoft.” Gates writes an open letter to
computer hobbyists, condemning the early adopters for sharing, rather than paying for, software.
April 1977 Setting up Microsoft
Gates takes a second leave of absence from Harvard and sets up Microsoft in Albuquerque, N.M.,
where MITS is headquartered. Microsoft’s year-end sales exceed $1 million in 1978,
gaining Bill a reputation for being tough, but focused.
August 1981 Microsoft launches MS-DOS system
Microsoft incorporates and buys the rights to the operating system
“DOS” from Seattle Computer Products and provides its license to IBM.
Followed by this in 1983, Allen leaves Microsoft after developing
Hodgkin’s disease and Microsoft announces Windows as an extension of its MS-DOS operating system.
November 1985 Microsoft Windows and IBM
Bill launched the first retail version of Microsoft Window. In August of the following year,
Microsoft struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system
called OS/2. Although, the partnership deteriorated due to creative differences.
November 1987 Youngest Billionaire in the World
At age 31, Gates becomes the youngest billionaire ever. He meets his future wife, Melinda French,
at a Microsoft event in New York the same year.
September 1989 Emergence of Corbis
Gates found Corbis, an archive of art and photography from public and private collections.
Corbis later becomes one of the largest collections of visual information in the world.
September 1990 Bill vs State
The Federal Trade Commission began an investigation into
possible collusion between IBM and Microsoft for divvying up the market
for operating systems in an anti-competitive way. The matter was later settled in 1994.
March 1994 Gates marries Melinda
Bill Gates and Melinda French got married in 1994, on a golf course on the Hawaiian island of Lanai.
They had three children together: Jennifer, Rory and Phoebe. In the same year, they found
one of the largest private foundations in the world Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
July 1995 Richest Man Alive
At age 39 and with a fortune of $12.9 billion, Gates becomes the world’s richest man. Later that
summer in 1995, Microsoft introduces Internet Explorer to the world, as part of Windows 95.
Gates begins to shift Microsoft’s focus toward the emerging Internet.
May 1998 Microsoft faces Lawsuit
The U.S. Justice Department charges Microsoft with engaging in anticompetitive
and exclusionary practices designed to maintain its monopoly in personal
computer operating systems and to extend that monopoly to Internet browsing software.
May 2000 Steps down as Microsoft CEO
Gates steps down as CEO of Microsoft. Gates’ former Harvard dorm-mate and right-hand man
Steve Ballmer takes over the helm, while Gates becomes chief software architect.
July 2005 Honouring Bill Gates
Queen Elizabeth II bestows an honorary knighthood on Gates for his contributions
to the United Kingdom. Time names him a “Person of the Year,” along with Melinda Gates and Bono,
for what the magazine called his “good Samaritan” work.
December 2007 Graduates Harvard University
Gates “graduates” from Harvard after dropping out; the university awards him with an honorary degree.
Gates gives the commencement speech, encouraging the graduates to strive for social change.
“Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries,” Gates says to the class, “but
in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.”
February 2014 Microsoft to Philanthropy
Gates stepped down as Chairman of Microsoft and currently serves as a advisor to support CEO
Satya Nadella. He dedicated himself to Bill & Melinda Foundation
and focused on global issues of Climate Change, Global Health and Development, and education.
March 2020 All I care about is the World!
Bill Gates is currently the 4th richest in the world with a worth of $123 Billion.
On March 13, 2020, Gates left his board positions at Berkshire Hathaway
and Microsoft to dedicate himself to his philanthropic endeavours. In 2011 Gates says,
“If you gave me the choice between picking the next 10 presidents or ensuring
that the energy is environmentally friendly and a quarter as costly, I would pick the energy thing.”