Bill Gates

Few people in the world have not heard of the name Bill Gates. Most people know of Bill Gates as one of the richest men in the world and as one of the co-founders of Microsoft. Let's have a look at some of the major events that have taken place in his life from birth to year 2000:

• 1955: Bill Gates is born in Seattle, Washington.
• 1967: Gates is enrolled in Lakeside School, a private school located in Seattle. Here, he meets his future business partner Paul Allen. The two of them bonded over their interest in computers.
• 1973: Gates enters Harvard as a pre-law major. However, his interest quickly shifts to computer sciences.
• 1975: Bill Gates and Paul Allen see a magazine advertizement for the worlds first commercially successful home computer, the Altair 8800. Bill calls the maker, MITS, and asks if they are interested in purchasing software for the machine. MIT eventually buys the software and Bill takes and Paul start the company "Micro-Soft".
• 1977: Gates sets up Microsoft in Albuquerque, N.M.
• 1978: Microsoft year-end sales exceed $1 million.
• 1979: Gates moves the company to Bellevue, Washington. Gates is placed as the head of Microsoft. At this time Microsoft had grown to 25 employyes.
• 1981: Microsoft buys rights to "DOS", modifies it, and renames it to "MS-DOS". Microsoft then licenses it to IBM.
• 1987: Bill Gates becomes the youngest billionaire, at only 31 years old. He also meets Melinda French, his future wife, at a Microsoft event.
• 1989: Gates founds Interactive Home Systems, which started off as an art licensing company. Eventually it is renamed to Corbis.
• 1994: Bill and Melinda get married, and the two combined their charitable donations with the William H. Gates Foundation which is named after Gate's father. Later on, the foundation is absorbed into the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
• 1995: Gates becomes the world's richest man, with a fortune of $12.9 billion. Microsoft launches Internet Explorer and also begins to shift his attention towards the Internet.
• 1998: Bill is hit in the face with a cream pie by Noel Godin.

Credit: NPR

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