UIL/Townsville Campus Union Institute of Language

Project 1 - DEEP 1

WILLIAM HENRY GATES III

1955 -

Raphael Rocha Pacheco

Summary
1.

Introduction.............................................................................................. 2

2.

Childhood and Education...........................................................................2

3.

Gates Career............................................................................................ 3

4.

Microsoft Story.......................................................................................... 4

5.

The Windows System................................................................................ 5

6.

Life and Philanthropy of Gates...................................................................6

7.

References................................................................................................ 6

1. Introduction
William Henry Gates III is one of person most important in computation.
His influence has impact on several areas of programming, engineering and
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especially in the lives of people. He created the main platform of programming

and the biggest system that currently is used worldwide.
His achievements can be cited as Microsoft Company, the interface
graphic Windows, office programs such as Microsoft office and languages of
programming as MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), FORTRAN and
BASIC. In addition, it is the main reasons for me choose write about Bill gates,
because this inventions have a big relation with my field of engineering.
Through technological innovation, risk strategies and competitive tactics,
Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen built the largest company of software of the
world. For his intelligence and his monopolistic vision, Gates also became the
youngest billionaire of the world at 31 years of age.
Besides being one of the greatest visionaries of all times, as a result of
some events that occurred in his life, he also worked in philanthropic activities
investing billions in education, health world and Low-income communities.
The main reasons for me write about Bill gates and awaken my interest
in his story is the relation that his inventions have with my field of engineering
and with technology. How he achieved success through his business strategies
and what impacts in world has his philanthropic efforts also are good points to
my choose.
Therefore, this research will show the main facts of his life such as his
childhood, education, achievements, relationship with his family, effects on the
population and how he achieved success.
2. Childhood and Education
William Henry Gates III, born on October 28,1955, in Seattle, Washington
was the second of three children of Sr William H. Gates, a promising but shy
law student, and Mary Maxwell Gates, an outgoing student at the University of
Washington. As a result of name of his father that has a suffix II in final, he was
known as trey. He had a good relationship with his family mainly with his mother
who after a career as a teacher devoted her time to help charities. (Biography
website, Pag 1)

Trey grew up in an upper middle class family with his two sisters
Kristianne and Libby and all three children always were encouraged to seek
excellence. Gates was a gifted student who was good in all subjects of the
school and was fascinated by study of mathematics. (Biography website, Pag 1)
In 1967, Gatess parents enrolled him in the Lakeside School. Although
his father expected that his son could be a lawyer, in the Lakeside School, with
only 13 years he developed interest to study computing programming. He wrote
a tic-tac-toe program in BASIC computer language that can be used by users to
play against computer. There, he also met his future business partner Paul
Allen, and they explored possibilities to learn the basics of computer
programming. (Teamline website, pag 1;Byography website, pag 2)
After that in 1970, at the age 15, Bill Gates and his friend Paul developed
the Traf-o-Data, a computer program that monitored traffic patterns in Seattle.
They received around of $20.000 for their efforts. Excited about the return
received, they wanted to create their own company. However, Gatess parents
hoped him to finish his school to enter University and, therefore study law
course. (Byography website, Pag 2)

3. Gates Career
Acccording biography website, in 1973, Bill Gates graduated from
Lakeside in June after scoring 1590 out of 1600 points on the SAT. In the first
moment, he tried to follow law as a career. However, he was devoted to
laboratory of computation.
As Bill Gates keep the contact with his partner, Paul shown a magazine
for Gates about a mini-computer called the Altair 8800 that was produced by a
small company in Albuquerque, Mexico, called MITS (Micro Instrumentation and
Telemetry Systems). After that, they contacted this company to show their
program BASIC, stating that it could work together with Altair. (Biography
website, pag 2)
However, they still did not have an Altair to work or any project about this
subject. In addition, they tried to get interest of the MITS Company. They
adapted the computer language BASIC to run on the new device. Therefore, the
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president of Company asked the young entrepreneur for a demonstration and

they secured a software development contract with MITS. (Byography website,
pag 3)
After that, Bill Gates left the University of Harvard to move to Mexico at
1975 to produce the new software for MITS and developed the first personal
computer of the world, although it was not the wish of his father. As a result,
they started their own company, MICROSOFT. It is a mixed between Microcomputer and Software. (achievement website, 2010)
Initially, the software of Microsoft was distributed free by MITS, together
with an Altair computer and just a few people really paid for it. However, Gates
thought that free distribution was stealing. Because the software of the
Microsoft was created to be sold. In 1976, Bill Gates and Allen officially
registered Microsoft and wrote an open letter to computer Lobbyists to stop the
use of software without pay to their company. One year later, he wrote other
computer languages, including FORTRAN for several companies. It is a big
language of programming that currently is used at large scale for all kinds of
engineering and computation. (Timeline website, pag1; Winspark website, pag
1)
After MITS was sold, Gates moved Microsoft to Bellevue, Washington,
near his hometown of Seattle. For this reason, this place became a centre of
the computer software industry. He placed himself as the head of Microsoft. As
a result, Microsofts sales exceed $1 million when he was only 23 years old.
(Timeline website, pag1)
4. Microsoft Story
In 1980, IBM sought a software that could work with their personal
computer (PC) and Microsoft appeared. However, it had not developed the
basic system to operate IBMS computer. Gates bought an operating system
that was developed to run on computers similar to IBM's PC. (Biography web
site, pag 4)
Therefore in 1981, Gates adapted QDOS system to use in IBM
hardware. He called his program Microsoft Disk Operating System, or MSDOS. In addition, he made a deal with the software's developer, making
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Microsoft the exclusive licensing agent. For this reason, IBM sued Microsoft.
(achievement website, 2010)
When the IBM PC became a success, other manufacturers wanted
create personal computers more cheap based in the DOS system. In addition,
Microsoft's operating system became universal. The only competitor in personal
computer operating systems was Apple that chose work in opposite way,
Macintosh operating system could only run on Apple Macintosh computers.
By 1983, Microsoft became the main producer of software around world.
Meanwhile, also an unexpected fact happened, Pall Allen was diagnosed with
Hodgkin's disease, a cancer. After that, Pall resigned from company that same
year. (Biography website, pag 4)
5. The Windows System

In 1981, Apple invited Microsoft to help develop software for Macintosh

computers. Some developers were involved in both companies, Apple and
Microsoft, but Apple had a project based in graphic interface system called
VisiCorp. A system was that used a mouse to access a graphic interface,
displaying text and images on the screen. This is different from the MS-DOS
system, which use text and keyboard, and all text formatting appears on the
screen as code. (Biography website, pag 4; achievement website, 2010)
However, Bill gates felt threatened, because this new system was easier
to use than MS-DOS. Therefore, he announced WINDOWS, the new system of
Microsoft that would be compatible with all MS-DOS system produced by
Microsoft.

It was marketing strategy, because he had not completed this

program still under development. (Biography website, pag 4)

As the majority of market computer was using MS-DOS system, the
users preferred to wait for windows software rather than change to a new
system. For this reason, software developers did not want develop programs for
the VisiCorp, because there are not too many people who wanted to change the
platform. (Biography website, pag 4)
In 1985, Microsoft launched Windows, nearly two years after his
announcement and in a few years, another applications of the windows as
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Microsoft's office had become the leaders in their categories such as,
Microsoft Word for word processing, Excel for creating spreadsheets,
PowerPoint for graphic presentation, and Internet Explorer for browsing in
internet. (achievement website, 2010)
As Microsoft had full access technology of Apple and the WINDOWS was
very similar to the Macintosh system introduced nearly two years early, Apple
sued Microsoft, but without success, because the apples system did not have
license.
According to Biography website in 1986, Bill Gates took Microsoft public
with an initial public offering (IPO) of $21 per share. Gates held 45 percent of
the company's 24.7 million shares and became an instant millionaire at age 31.
Gates' stake at that time was $234 million of Microsoft's $520 million.

6. Life and Philanthropy of Gates

In 1989, Bill Gates met Melinda French, an executive of 28 years old and
in 1994, they married in Hawaii. After that, in few months, later Gates mother
was diagnosed with breast cancer. She died in June 1994. (Biograhy website,
pag 7)
After that, influenced by his wife, he studied the philanthropic work of
Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, big names of the American industrial
revolution. Moreover, in 1994, they create the William H. Gates Foundation,
which was dedicated to supporting education, world health, and investment in
low-income communities. Therefore, in 2000 Gates make billions contribution to
create Bill and Melina Gates Foundation. (Biograhy website, pag 7)
Over the years, he decreased his involvement Business of Microsoft and
put his college friend Steve Ballmer in his position to administer the company,
because the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation occupied much of his time and
even more of his interest. (Biograhy website, pag 7)
In 2006, Gates and his wife were awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle
for their philanthropic work and he announced that wanted to devote more time

to the foundation. His last day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. (Biograhy
website, pag 8)
7. References
<http://www.biography.com/people/bill-gates-9307520> accessed in 15th
September 2013;
<http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2008/june/bill_gates/gates_timeline_04.html
#top> accessed in 15th September 2013;
<http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/microsoft-corporationhistory/> accessed in 15th September 2013;
<http://www.gatesfoundation.org> accessed in 15th September 2013;
<http://winspark.net/2013/02/03/the-history-of-microsoft-and-bill-gatestimeline/> accessed in 15th September 2013;
<http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/gat0bio-1> accessed in 15th
September 2013.