Bill Gates - One of the Wealthiest American

Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corporation hardly needs any introduction. Bill Gates had luck, and tough tasks ahead of him, which made him an excellent business man and world's richest man. He has an interesting and inspiring life story.

Bill Gates - Wealthiest American

Gates and his family: His full name is William Henry Gates the III, he was born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington. Williams H Gates Sr. and Marry Max Well Gates were his parents. Gates has got one elder sister named Kristianne and a younger sister named Libby. His family was of entrepreneurship and high-spirited liveliness. Gates father is a Seattle attorney. His late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University of Washington regent.

Gates and Education: When Bill enrolled for Lakeside school, an exclusively preparatory school at the age of 13 it proved to be a turning point. Gates developed a special interest in GE terminal computer and went ahead to learn and develop programs using programming language BASIC. He developed his first major program on his own, which is an implementation of game called as tic-tac-toe. This is the beginning of his bright career. In 1973, Bill Gates became a student at Harvard University, where he meet Steve Ballmer (now Microsoft's chief executive officer). While still a Harvard undergraduate, Bill Gates wrote a version of the programming language BASIC for the MITS Altair microcomputer. At age of 18, in 1973, Gates got graduated from Lakeside school, where he scored 1590 out of 1600, in the standardized tests for college admissions across the US.

Starting point of his career: The four students were, Gates himself, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland and Kent Evans got a chance to work in Computer Center Corporation (CCC). There was bug in the CCC's operating system and four of them offered to debug CCC's software in exchange for free computer time. Instead of using the system via teletype, Gates intentionally went personally to CCC's offices and studied source code for various source code that were kept in their offices, which included Fortran, LISP, and finally the machine language. When CCC winded up their business in 1970, Information Sciences Inc. hired these four students to write Payroll program in COBOL providing them the computer and royalties. At age 17, gates formed a team up with Paul Allen, to make traffic counters which was based on Intel 8088 processor, a project called as Traf-O-Data.

Bill Gates and Microsoft: In fall of 1973, Gates took admission at the Harvard University. It was he who met his future partner Steve Ballmer, here. Gates did not have a definite study plan, which made him go on leave from 1975 on. But, to his grace, processor manufacturer Intel had released Intel 8088 CPU. It was his luck and he realized that it was the first computer chip which could run BASIC and could be affordable to run inside a personal computer. The cost of the chip was around $200 at that time. He realized the advantageous situation he earned at that moment, which many of us drop, fearing heavy losses, and started sharing his plans with his parents and decided to start a company with right spirits with Paul Allen.

In 1975, before graduation Gates left Harvard to form Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen. The pair planned to develop software for the newly emerging personal computer market. Bill Gate's company Microsoft became famous for their computer operating systems and great business deals. On November 10, 1983, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, Microsoft Corporation formally announced Microsoft Windows, a next-generation operating system. Apart from Windows operating systems, the company has developed many system and office packages, database, and games programs. Microsoft developed MS-Office, which has grown to Office 2007 now. The relational database management system, SQL Server has been a main competitor to Oracle. Microsoft had revenues of US$51.12 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2007, and employs more than 78,000 people in 105 countries and regions.

Bill Gates and his retirement: In 2008, Bill Gates will retire from his day job as chief software architect of Microsoft, the company he founded more than three decades ago. Gates said he is leaving gradually in order to smooth the transition of his duties to the two men who will assume them--chief technical officers Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie, who have been named chief software architect and chief research and strategy officer, respectively, effective immediately. In an interview, Gates emphasized that he has no plans to ever give up his position as chairman of Microsoft's board of directors. "I don't see a time in the future when I won't be chairman of this company," he said. "I see myself as always being the largest shareholder in Microsoft. Steve is the second largest, and I think we both take a lot of pride in that." Gates has plans to spend more time on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that he started with his wife Melinda to support philanthropic initiatives in the areas of global health and learning.

Important events in Gates life:

1975-04-04 - Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
1994-01-01 - Microsoft CEO Bill Gates (38) marries Melinda French (29)
1994-11-11 - Bill Gates buys Leonardo da Vinci's "Codex" for $30,800,000
1995-07-17 - Forbes Mag announces Bill Gates is the richest man in world ($12.9B)
1998-02-04 - Bill Gates gets a pie thrown in his face in Brussels Belgium
1998-03-03 - Bill Gates testifies at Senate Judiciary Committee
2000-01-13 - Microsoft chairman Bill Gates steps aside as chief executive and promotes company president Steve Ballmer to the position
2008-06-27 - Bill Gates steps down as Chairman of Microsoft Corporation to work full time for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.