William Henry Gates, an American entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist, was born on October 28, 1955. He and his childhood buddy Paul Allen co-founded the software behemoth Microsoft. Gates served as chairman, chief executive officer, president, and chief software architect during his tenure at Microsoft. From May 2013 to May 2014, he also served as the company's largest individual shareholder. He played a significant role in the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s as an entrepreneur.
Seattle, Washington is where Gates was born and reared. He and Allen established Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1975. Later it grew to become the biggest personal computer software provider in the world. Up until January 2000, when he stepped down as CEO and was replaced by Steve Ballmer, Gates served as the company's chairman and chief executive officer. He also served as the company's lead software architect.He received criticism for his business practices in the late 1990s because they were seen as anti-competitive. Numerous court decisions have supported this opinion. Gates left Microsoft in June 2008 to work full-time for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the private nonprofit organization he and his then-wife Melinda had Founded in 2000.
In order to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella, he resigned from his position as chairman of the Microsoft board in February 2014 and took on the role of technology adviser. In order to devote more time to his charitable initiatives on climate change, global health and development, and education, Gates resigned from his board seats at Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway in March 2020.
Early life
The lone son of William Henry Gates II, William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington, on October 28, 1955. He has English, German, and Irish/Scots-Irish ancestry. His mother was a member of the First Interstate BancSystem and United Way of America boards of directors, while his father was a well-known attorney. President of a big bank, J. W. Maxwell, was Gates' maternal grandfather. Gates has two sisters: Libby, who is younger, and Kristi, who is older. Despite being the third William Gates in his family, he goes by Trey because his father had the "II" prefix.When Gates was seven years old, a rare tornado devastated the family's home in Seattle's Sand Point neighborhood.
Gates claims that his parents encouraged him to seek a legal career when he was a young boy. His family routinely visited a Congregational Christian Church during his upbringing, which belongs to the Protestant Reformed tradition. Gates was teased as a child because he was undersized for his age. The family promoted competition; according to a visitor, "there was always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing, whether it was hearts, pickleball, or swimming to the dock.
Microsoft
After reading the Popular Electronics article from January 1975 showcasing the Altair 8800, Gates got in touch with Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems to let them know that he and others were developing a BASIC interpreter for the system. Gates and Allen only intended to measure MITS's interest; in actuality, neither of them owned an Altair nor had they developed any code for it. They constructed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer over the course of a few weeks, and then the BASIC interpreter when MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet with them for a demonstration. An agreement was reached with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC as a result of the demonstration, which took place at MITS' offices in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
In November 1975, MITS hired Allen, and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with him there. Their initial office was in Albuquerque, and Allen called their partnership "Micro-Soft," a combination of the words "microcomputer" and "software." Ric Weiland, who they had worked with in high school, was the first person Gates and Allen hired. Within a year, they removed the hyphen, and on November 26, 1976, they formally registered the trade name "Microsoft" with the Secretary of the State of New Mexico. Gates never went back to Harvard to finish his education.
Although computer hobbyists favored Microsoft's Altair BASIC, Gates learned that a pre-market copy had gotten out and was being widely copied and disseminated. He claimed in an Open Letter to Hobbyists published in the MITS newsletter in February 1976 that more than 90% of Microsoft Altair BASIC users had not paid Microsoft for it and that the Altair "hobby market" was in danger of taking away motivation for any professional software developers to create, distribute, and maintain high-quality software. Many computer hobbyists found this letter to be unpopular, but Gates maintained in his opinion that software creators should be free to request payment.
Partnership in IBM
After Gates' mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, introduced Microsoft to John Opel, IBM's then CEO, IBM, the largest provider of computer equipment to business enterprises at the time, contacted Microsoft in July 1980 regarding software for their impending personal computer, the IBM PC. Microsoft initially suggested IBM create the BASIC interpreter. Gates sent IBM's officials to Digital Research, the company that created the well-known CP/M operating system, when they noted that they also needed an operating system. However, the negotiations between IBM and Digital Research did not go well, and no licensing agreement was reached. During a following meeting with Gates, IBM representative Jack Sams brought up the licensing issues and enquired as to whether Microsoft might provide an operating system.
A few weeks later, Gates and Allen suggested implementing 86-DOS, an operating system created by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) on hardware comparable to the PC and resembling CP/M.Microsoft and SCP agreed that Microsoft would be 86-DOS's sole licensing representative and eventually its full owner. For a one-time payment of $50,000, Microsoft hired Paterson to modify the operating system for the PC and provided it to IBM as PC DOS.
Windows
On November 20, 1985, Microsoft and Gates released the first retail version of Microsoft Windows in an effort to compete with Apple's Macintosh GUI, which had won consumers over with its usability and simplicity. The business and IBM agreed to work together to create the OS/2 operating system in August 1986. Despite the two businesses' success in creating the first iteration of the new system, their working relationship deteriorated as a result of growing creative disagreements. Over a decade, the operating system evolved naturally from DOS till Windows 95, which by default covered over the DOS prompt. One year after Gates' resignation as CEO of Microsoft, Windows XP was made available.
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