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William Henry Gates III was born on October 28th, 1955, to William Henry Gates II and Mary Maxwell Gates. William, famously known as Bill would become a successful computer programmer, businessman and philanthropist, among various other achievements (Becraft, M.B, 1). Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopedia. "Bill Gates summary". Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 Feb. 2014, https://www.britannica.com/summary/Bill-Gates. Accessed 30 October 2022.
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Gates begins his short college career at Harvard University. This will be where he meets his best friend and fellow programmer Steve Ballmer (Becraft, M.B, 12). -
Gates and Allen create the company Micro-soft. Paul Allen comes up with the name because they would be working on "microcomputer software" (Becraft, M.B, 24). -
Gates drops out of Harvard and moves to Albuquerque, New Mexico with business partner, Paul Allen, to begin work on the Altair 8800. The Altair BASIC is developed (Becraft, M.B., 24). -
Microsoft's business relationship with MITS begins to sour when Gates notices that only a small percentage of Altair purchases were including the Altair BASIC program (Becraft, M.B., 29).
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Bill Gates and Paul Allen form an official partnership with Gates owning 64 percent of all shares (Becraft, M.B, 31). -
Microsoft wins an arbitration lawsuit against MITS and is now able to sell the BASIC program to anyone. MITS would no longer share in the royalties (Becraft, M.B, 33). -
Gates and Allen move Microsoft from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Bellevue, Washington (Becraft, Michael B, 34). -
In 1980, Bill (with some assistance from his mother's connections) is hired by IBM to develop an operating system for its first personal computer (Becraft, Michael B., 39). -
Gates hires friend Steve Ballmer to become the first business manager of Microsoft. Ballmer will also receive partial ownership to entice him to join the company (Becraft, Michael B., 37). -
In July of 1981, Microsoft buys the license for the 86-DOS. Two weeks later, on August 12, 1981, the IBM PC was introduced. This launches Microsoft into incredible growth (Becraft, M.B., 40). -
While Microsoft is busy selling MS-DOS, software to Apple and an operating system to IBM, the company releases Windows 1.0 on November 20, 1985 (Becraft, Michael B., 49). -
Microsoft essentially controls the operating system industry in 1987. The company has now created MS-DOS, Apple's MacIntosh, Microsoft Windows and IBM's OS/2 and reaps the benefits regardless of which platform succeeds (Becraft, M.B., 53). -
Gates develops the Library Project which provides access to computers and training for low income and rural areas in the US and Canada (Becraft, M.B., 147).
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Gates leaves Microsoft to focus on his philanthropic work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation established grants to various programs focused on fighting malaria, rotovirus, and HIV/AIDS in low-income communities throughout the world (Schlender, B., vol. 162, no. 1, p. 94).