Bill Gates

Date of Birth: 10.28.1955

Bill Gates' Biography

William Henry Gates III - American entrepreneur and social activist, philanthropist, one of the founders (together with Paul Allen) and former largest shareholder of Microsoft. He is also co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a board member of Berkshire Hathaway, and CEO of Cascade Investment.

Place of Birth and Education. He was born in Seattle, Washington, into a family of corporate lawyer William Henry Gates II and board member of First Interstate Bank, Pacific Northwest Bell, and national council of USWest, United Way Mary Maxwell Gates.

Bill Gates attended the municipal primary school and then the private Lakeside School. In 1973, he began studying at Harvard Law School but was dropped out in 1975 due to poor academic performance and absenteeism.

Career.

In 1970, the first company Traf-O-Data was established, where Bill Gates and his classmates - Paul Allen and Paul Gilbert worked. The company was engaged in developing a program for optimizing street traffic, which was the first successful application sold by Bill Gates to the government for $20,000.

In 1971, Information Sciences commissioned Bill and Paul to write a program for creating credit cards.

In 1972, Gates wrote a package of programs for power distribution and security of the Bonneville Dam. The payment was $30,000.

By the end of 1973, Paul Allen, Bill's friend, got a job at Honeywell's Boston branch, and Gates began helping him create programs.

In 1974, MITS created a new personal computer - the Altair 8800, and Bill proposed a completely new programming language for this computer, which later gained worldwide recognition - BASIC. The test implementation of the new language was successful, and Gates got a job at it.

In 1975, Gates and Allen founded the company Micro-Soft, later renamed to Microsoft Corporation.

In 1979, IBM offered Bill to create an operating system for the world's first personal computer, but Gates refused because he did not have suitable solutions for the task. In the same year, he purchased an operating system called 86-DOS and hired its author, Tim Patterson. After significant modifications, the purchased for $50,000 operating system became known as MS-DOS and was proposed by Gates' company for IBM PC.

In September 1980, IBM approved the project and signed a detailed agreement with Bill Gates.

In 1981, Paul Allen and Bill Gates transformed Microsoft into a corporation producing computer software. That year, IBM released the first personal computer with MS-DOS 1.0 - a sixteen-bit operating system. This computer's software included Microsoft products - COBOL, BASIC, Pascal.

In 1982, Bill Gates convinced IBM management of the necessity to expand MS-DOS distribution - relying on licensing this operating system to other PC manufacturers.

In 1983, Microsoft created a computer mouse - the Mouse device, which significantly facilitated data input into PCs using a graphical interface. Furthermore, Gates' company introduced a new text editor specifically for MS-DOS. In the same year, Gates' company presented Windows.

In 1993, twenty-five million people worldwide used the Windows system as registered users.

In 1998, the Microsoft corporation was accused of unfair practices against consumers and competitors. Bill Gates was suspected of many acts, including sending threatening electronic messages. As a result of the court process, the company was forced to pay significant fines and compensations, as well as change its business approach.

On December 14, 2004, Bill Gates became a board member of Berkshire Hathaway - a conglomerate that includes Geico (auto insurance), Benjamin Moore (paints), and Fruit of the Loom (textiles). Gates is also a board member of Icos, a biotechnology company in Bothell.

On January 7, 2008, Bill Gates announced his intention to retire as head of Microsoft Corporation in July 2008, shifting his focus to managing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a charity fund he founded with his wife to support health and education projects.

Since June 27, 2008, Gates handed over his duties to Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, but remained chairman of the board and the largest shareholder of Microsoft - 8.7%. Gates' departure had virtually no impact on the company's performance.

Bill Gates established a company called Bill Gates Company Three ('bgC3'). Its activities are positioned as research-non-commercial, and according to regulatory documents, 'bgC3' deals with analytical research, providing technology services, and developing software and computer hardware.

In October 2013, according to Reuters, three major Microsoft shareholders (holding about 5% of the shares) demanded Bill Gates' resignation as chairman of the corporation's board. At that time, Gates' share was 4.5%. In February 2014, Gates resigned from his position as chairman of the board.

On December 2, 2015, along with Zuckerberg, he founded the Breakthrough Energy Coalition fund, which called for attracting private investments in searching for and developing clean and alternative energy sources. He created the Mission Innovation initiative, aimed at bringing together 20 countries, including the UK, the USA, Brazil, I