Bill Gates is one of the most important names in the world. He is known primarily as the creator of the Microsoft empire, who virtually revolutionized the utility and use of a computer, as well as the world’s richest man, whose wealth exceeds $ 50 billion. But how many know how was Bill Gates before becoming the tycoon that is today? Did you know for example that Gates was a hacker when he was young?
On October 28, 1955, William Henry Gates III is born. He comes from a family with a rich history in business, politics and community services. His grandfather was a state legislator, the other grandfather was vice president of a national bank and his father a lawyer. The latter used his ambition, intelligence and competitive spirit to help his son and two daughters to assert themselves in their professions. Their mother was a professor at the University of Washington.
Little Bill went to an elementary school, beating his colleagues in all areas, so the parents decided to enroll him at a private school in Lakeside. This decision had special effects for his entire life. At Lakeside, Bill Gates stepped into the computer science.
In the spring of 1968, Lakeside school decides that it was time to initiate the students in the computer world. Bill Gates, Paul Allen and several other students (many of them eventually became the first programmers of Microsoft) immediately became fans of the computers. They were present in the computers room all day and night, writing programs and reading computer literature or anything else related to it. Soon, Bill’s band began to have problems at school, he began to skip the regular classes.
In the summer of 1968, the Computer Center Corporation opened its headquarters in Seattle. Through a contract with Lakeside Prep School, it was committed to offer the students the chance to work on their computers. Bill Gates and his comrades are, of course, the first that go there.
Before that, they had some problems, breaking computer security systems, so their access to the system was prohibited. Bill Gates, Paul Allen and two other hackers from Lakeside formed the Lakeside Programmers Group, trying to find ways of applying their knowledge of computers in everyday life. The first opportunity is the direct result of the crazy things made in school. Computer Center Corporation began to suffer from frequent breakage of hackers and their security systems were far from being developed. Impressed by the band which contained Gates also, the company leaders decided to follow the advice of these students to find bugs and to identify the system weaknesses. Thus, the company provides them computers for an unlimited time and offer them something that they cannot refuse. The young hackers’s work is uninterrupted. Gates and Allen really develop their talent that will propel, seven years later, when leading Microsoft.
Computer Center Corporation’s bankruptcy is announced in 1970. The group of programmers at Lakeside is forced to look for a new place to be able to devote their time in computing. They find several computers in the University of Washington campus where Allen’s dad worked. A year later, young people are taken in by Information Sciences Inc. This gives them back computers to work on.
Gates and Allen are already contemplating to establish a new company, which belongs entirely to them. The School Administration gives Bill Gates the chance to work on Image Gallery, a computerization program of the institution. He asked Allen to help him with the project. They complete the program in two months during the summer.
In the last years of school, Gates and Allen continue to seek opportunities to use their knowledge to make some money. Soon they get working at TRW, where they develop into real programmers. In the fall of 1973, Gates leaves home to enroll at Harvard University, but soon realizes that his soul is not inclined to study, because after he finds the computer room, he is lost in that world again. He spents nights there too working and during the day he sleep in class. After the first year of Harvard, he finds a summer job at the firm called Honeywell.
In December 1974, his life changes. Both he and Allen know that the computer market is ready to explode and that market needs someone to make software for these new machines. One day, the two call the company Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry System (MITS) – Altair’s promoters – and inform them that they have developed a computer language MITS Altair. It was a lie, in fact, they had written a single line in that code.
The company showed a high interest in that software, so the young people started working on it, because it was not ready. In one month though, the program was ready and worked perfectly. Gates left Harvard to devote his energies to Microsoft, founded in 1975 with his childhood friend, Paul Allen. Guided by the belief that each and every home must have a computer, they began developing software for personal computers. Under Gates’ leadership, the company continued to grow, implementing software technology, making it more accessible to computer users. In a single year, the investments in research increased to four billion dollars.11