Bill Gates

The current “richest man” in the world was born on October 28th 1955 with the

name of William Henry Gates III (or “Trey” as his grandmother nick-named him) and was raised

with his two sisters in Seattle. At times his parents worried that he was not normal as a child. He

spent most of his time reading books and encyclopedias, and had a serious problem with

sarcasm. Although he was proactive at home with reading and learning, he never performed

exceptionally well in his public elementary school until he was transferred to Lakeside Private

School in 7th grade. There he would go on to excel in math and science with other children of his

kind. Here he would find his true dream as a software designer. At the age of thirteen he

programmed a General Electric computer in the BASIC programming language to play tic-tac-

toe. It sounds simple but it was no small feat. He would also meet his future good-friend and

business partner in crime: Paul Allen. Paul Allen is a bit older than “Trey” but they’ve always

gotten along well (despite Bills extreme over-the-top sarcasm and lack of personal hygiene).

Having a common goal and idea on things made it easier for them. What brought these two

future multi-billionaires together was a simple teletypewriter that was purchased for their school

with money raised from a rummage sale. Bill easily caught on to and mastered this computer

very quickly and had already started thinking of how to make the idea better. One problem they

found was that renting time on the mainframe to use the computer was expensive. Bill and Paul

used their school’s yearly budget of time in a matter of months. They had to come up with a

solution to this, and desperately needed more time. This is where C Cubed came in. They were

a new company in Seattle who bought their own personal mainframe computer and were

planning to rent time to large clients such as Boeing. They had a problem though, the computer

wasn’t perfect and needed very frequent de-bugging, sometimes twice per hour. The boys were

perfect for this. In exchange for free mainframe time they would catch the bugs in the system
and fix them. But, as all things, the fun came to an end when they used up all of their free time,

again. No problem really. Someone (although it has never been known who) decided to take

matters into their own hands and hack into the system accounts to allot themselves unlimited

free time. At this time in history hacking into a computer network was not against the law just

frowned upon. Luckily for them the CEO of C Cubed decided to put the boys back to work

again. They would hack in to the system and show the developers how they did it and they

would make the system more secure for the next attempt. After this it sort of became a game

when C Cubed would write a harder code and the boys would break in again and show the

developers how they had done it. This simple high school story is the start of something great

for Bill. It created the foundation for what he would eventually devote his life to. The obnoxious

Bill would continue to grow, learn, and pursue his dreams through high school where he made a

1500 out of 1600 on the SAT and was accepted to Princeton, Yale and Harvard. He chose to

enroll at Harvard. Once his classes began he soon found out that he wasn’t the only boy-genius

in the world and that many other kids were as smart as or smarter than him and that college

was no joke. “It kind of confused me that there were people who actually were better at math

than me,” he recalls “It was a new data point”. He did fine in math and science as usual but, it

was the fine arts that pushed his limits; but with hard work he held his own. Bill and Paul of

course stayed great friends and “project” partners throughout their rough and experimental

years at Harvard. During these years they accomplished many feats including the programming

of the MITS Altair and the start of a small business with the name of “Micro-Soft” which with

great success has been up graded to just” Microsoft”.

 Works Cited

1. "Bill Gates: Chairman, Microsoft Corp." Microsoft Corporation. Web. 16 Dec.

2009. <http://www.microsoft.com/PRESSPASS/EXEC/BILLG/BIO.MSPX>.

2. "Bill Gates Biography." Woopidoo Business Success - Motivational Business

Quotes. Web. 16 Dec. 2009. <http://www.woopidoo.com/biography/bill-
gates.htm>.

3. "Bill Gates Biography - Bill Gates Childhood, Bill Gates Timeline & Profile, Bill
Gates before Microsoft." Lifestyle Lounge - Online Lifestyle Magazine -
Lifestyle Management Tips. Web. 16 Dec. 2009.
<http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/bill-gates-1239.html>.

4. "Bill Gates - Biography -." Biography.com. Web. 16 Dec. 2009.

<http://www.biography.com/articles/Bill- Gates-9307520>.

5. Woog, Adam. Bill Gates. San Diego, CA: Lucent Books, 1999. Print.

6. "The life of Bill Gates." New York Times Magazine 13 Jan. 1997: 17-19. Print.