Timeline: The Life of Bill Gates By kendallheurkins Oct 28, 1955 Birth, Seattle, WA. 1967 Enrolls in the Lakeside School in Seattle, where he first used a computer. 1968 Began his interest in computers and programming. Began programming with fellow classmate, Paul Allen. 1973 Began school at Harvard University. 1975 Started Micro-Soft with Paul Allen in Albuquerque, NM. 1976 Dropped the hyphen in Micro-Soft and changed company name to Microsoft. 1977 Takes a leave of absence from Harvard to work on his and Allen's company. 1983 Microsoft went global and had 30 percent of the world's computers running on its software. 1985 Microsoft launched Windows. 1986 Microsoft headquarters moves to Redmond, Washington and shortly after, the company finally goes public. 1987 Becomes the youngest billionaire ever at 31 years old. 1989 Founded Corbis. In that same year, Microsoft introduced Microsoft Office. 1994 Married Melinda Gates. 1995 Microsoft introduced Windows '95 to the world. 1999 Published his book Business @ the Speed of Thought. 2000 Stepped down as CEO of Microsoft and became chief software architect. 2000 The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is formed. 2005 Queen Elizabeth II bestowed Gates with an honorary knighthood for his contributions to the UK. Jun 7, 2007 Graduated from Harvard University.
