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"
Master of Business "
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Bill
Gates
History
William
Gates,
the son of a prominent
Seattle, Washington
lawyer, was
an underachieving math whiz in school. He was first
exposed to digital
computers while in the seventh grade and worked on various computer
projects for the next several years. While
in high school, Bill and a
friend, Paul Allen, formed a company called Traf-Data, which used the
Intel 8008 microprocessor to help control traffic patterns in Seattle.
Gates eventually sold this system to the city for $20,000 when he was
only fifteen years old.
He
dropped out of high school
for one year to
work for TRW in computing, earning $30,000. In 1974 Bill was
attending
Harvard University when Allen spotted an advertisement for a $350
assemble-at-home computer called the Altair 8800, manufactured by MITS,
a company headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico.Bill
and
Allen
worked nonstop for six weeks
to devise a simple version of
BASIC, a
programming language, for the Altair.
They
demonstrated their finished
product to the company's engineers with great success, and the
following year, Bill and Allen founded Microsoft Corporation.Microsoft
had entered the personal
computer (PC) industry at an
opportune time.The Apple Computer Corporation had introduced its Apple
II personal computer with much success. International Business Machines
Corporation (IBM) decided to enter the market but needed software
designed for specific tasks and an operating system that permitted
hardware to interpret the software.
In
1980 Microsoft won a contract
with IBM to operate personal computers using
Microsoft's system, commonly
known as MS-DOS. By 1983 the IBM PC had become
the industry
standard and MS-DOS was its operating system. In 1995, Microsoft
introduced Windows 95 which again revolutionized the PC market, and
became an industry standard.
Today
some 90% of all personal computers
use Microsoft Windows. In 1991 Gates was ranked number three on the Forbes
magazine list of the
wealthiest Americans; his
share of Microsoft is
worth approximately four billion dollars.By
1998 he had became
the
richest man in the world. In addition to operating systems, Microsoft
produces software for word processing, spreadsheets, games, and
Windows, which allows IBM PCs and their clones to use pictures and a
handheld "mouse" to eliminate complicated keyboard commands, much like
Apple did for its computers.
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In
1999, Bill wrote
Business @ the Speed
of
Thought, a book that shows how computer technology can solve business
problems in fundamentally new ways. The book was published in 25
languages and is available in more than 60 countries. Business @ the
Speed of Thought has received wide critical acclaim, and was listed on
the best-seller lists of the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street
Journal and Amazon.com. Gates' previous book, The Road Ahead, published
in 1995, held the No. 1 spot on the New York Times' bestseller list for
seven weeks.
Bill
has donated the proceeds
of both books to
non-profit organizations that support the use of technology in
education and skills development.
In
addition to his love of computers
and
software,
Bill founded Corbis, which is developing one of the world's largest
resources of visual information - a comprehensive digital archive of
art and photography from public and private collections around the
globe. He is also a member of the board of directors of Berkshire
Hathaway Inc., which invests in companies engaged in diverse business
activities.
Philanthropy
is also important to
Gates. He and
his wife, Melinda, have endowed a foundation with more than
$28.8
billion (as of January 2005) to support
philanthropic
initiatives
in
the areas of global health and learning, with the hope that in the 21st
century, advances in these critical areas will be available
for
all
people. The Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation has committed
more than
$3.6 billion to organizations working in global health; more than $2
billion to improve learning opportunities, including the Gates Library
Initiative to bring computers, Internet Access and training to public
libraries in low-income communities in the United States and Canada;
more than $477 million to community projects in the Pacific Northwest;
and more than $488 million to special projects and annual giving
campaigns.
Gates
was married on
Jan. 1, 1994, to Melinda
French Gates. They have three children. Gates
is an avid reader, and
enjoys playing golf and bridge.
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