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Bill Gates meets Paul Allen
Gates met his Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen at Lakeside, where Allen was two years ahead (Isaacson 317). -
Gates attends Lakeside school
This is where Gates was introduced to computers through a time-sharing computer terminal hooked up to a GE Mark-II (Isaacson 316). -
Gates and Allen form the Lakeside Programming Group
This group was made up of Gates, Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans (Isaacson 318). -
Gates goes to Harvard
This is where Gates met future Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (Isaacson 331) and began working on a brand for his and Allen's partnership. -
BASIC for Altair
Gates and Allen decided to write an interpreter for BASIC that would run on the Altair's Intel 8080 microprocessor. This would allow people to create their own programs on the Altair (Isaacson 332). -
Microsoft
After formalizing a deal with MITS to supply BASIC for the Altair, Gates and Allen needed a name for their company. At first they went with Micro-Soft, a mix of "micro-computer" and "software" (Isaacson 337). The hyphen was dropped within a year. -
Spread of Microsoft BASIC
Homebrew Club member Dan Sokol made copies of Gates' and Allen's code and distributed it among Homebrew members. This started the spread of Microsoft BASIC. This piracy did not initially make Gates happy, but in the long run it made Microsoft BASIC the standard language (Isaacson 343). -
Gates drops out of Harvard
Gates was focused more on his and Allen's partnership than with school. In 2007, Gates would return to Harvard to receive an honorary degree (Isaacson 336). -
IBM OS
Microsoft made a deal with IBM to license them all their programming languages and their operating system, MS-DOS (Isaacson 357). -
Windows OS announced
At a press conference at the Palace Hotel Bill Gates announced the development of Windows, Microsoft's new operating system that featured a GUI (Isaacson 368). -
Microsoft Office
This office production app included such apps as Word and Excel. This application was compatible with all Microsoft products (Biography.com) -
Marriage
Gates married Microsoft product manager Melinda French in 1994 (Biography.com). -
Children
Bill and Melinda Gates have three children: Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe (Biography.com). -
Gates Leaves Microsoft
Gates stepped down from day-to-day operations and made college buddy Steve Ballmer CEO (Biography.com). -
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
In 2000 Gates and his wife combined many of their foundations to form the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which supported education, health, and investment in low-income communities.
