Who is Bill Gates? Today, this question is unlikely to confuse anyone. Everyone knows the founder of Microsoft, but there are interesting facts from the biography of Bill Gates that you are unlikely to have heard of.
If you have read the short biography of an American entrepreneur, we recommend starting reading this article from point 5.
So, the top 10 facts from the life of Bill Gates. Enjoy reading! ☕
Bill Gates comes from a rich family
Bill Gates with his parents
Many people think that Bill Gates is a guy from a simple family, but this is a myth. Bill's father is a famous lawyer. The mother is not only a teacher, but also the president of the national board of United Way International and a member of the board of directors of a financial and telephone company.
Grandfather and great-grandfather also did not lag behind their relatives - the first was the vice-president of the national bank, and the second was the mayor and senator.
Mary Maxwell Gates (mother) and William Henry Gates II (father) even have their own Wikipedia pages. Agree, articles are not written about ordinary people on Wikipedia.
Personal life of Bill Gates
Since 1994, Bill has been married to former Microsoft marketing employee Melinda French (now Gates). She is a graduate of Duke University, where she studied computer science and economics. Melinda is 9 years younger than her husband. The future spouses met in 1987 and dated for about 7 years, after which they got married.
There was also Melinda Gates in her youth
Bill and Melinda raised three children: son Rory (born 1999) and daughters Jennifer (born 1996) and Phoebe (born 2002). It is known that after Gates' death, all his assets will be donated to charity. Gates has a different method - instead of spoiling children with “limitless” money, he invested in their education. All three graduated from the same Lakeside School in Seattle from which their father graduated many years ago.
Bill Gates with his wife and children
The family lives in a huge mansion located on the shores of picturesque Lake Washington. This house can rightfully be called the house of the future - it is equipped with high-tech equipment, with the help of which it is fully controlled.
At the age of 13 I wrote my first program
Bill Gates and Paul Allen
At the age of 13, his parents transferred little Bill to the Lakeside private school. By the way, here he met his future business partner, Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft Corporation).
After he had the opportunity to work with a computer at school, Bill became interested in programming. In the same year he wrote his first program - tic-tac-toe .
The technology always executed code flawlessly, so Gates was fascinated by computers from his school days.
Bill Gates success story: from creating a company to MS Windows
In 1975, Allen informed a friend about the start of production of a new generation of computers - the Altair 8800. And Bill, confident in his capabilities, called the head of the company that created them, Ed Roberts. The interview is successful, and the friends become employees of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS).
Not every short biography written about Bill Gates includes information about the proposed name of his first company. Friends expected to call her by their proper names. But then they changed their minds - and instead took the first halves of the words Microprocessors and Software. Then the hyphen disappeared from the name Micro-Soft, and the Microsoft brand was registered in 1976.
In 1976, the company was one of the first to begin selling licenses for its programs. This leads to the ability of PC manufacturers to integrate programming languages and operating systems into their equipment. Microsoft's revenues are increasing, as are the funds in the accounts of its creators.
After MITS ceased to exist, Gates and Allen found new partners. One of them is Apple Corporation, headed by another genius, Steve Jobs. Among the customers were Commodore and Radio shack, which developed inexpensive personal computers.
Bill Gates MS-DOS and success story
In the 1970s, Windows not only didn't exist, it wasn't even in development. But, as you can learn from the film based on the biography of Bill Gates , at this time Microsoft developed the Fortran platform. It was 1977, and the new operating system was a worthy competitor to existing programs for PCs with Intel processors.
In 1979, a contract was signed with IBM to create a new platform. To solve the problem, Bill bought a ready-made version of QDOS, which after modification changed its name to MS-DOS. After selling its license, Microsoft becomes famous. The company's managers receive their first excess profit. Although billions are still a long way off.
DOS proved so popular that it was installed on most computers in the early 1980s. However, the interface turned out to be too complex. And the company began developing Windows. The market demanded the creation of systems with a graphical interface. Moreover, Apple beat Microsoft by releasing the first version of MacOS in January 1984, 22 months earlier.
Windows OS
Few people know that the first office applications Word and Excel were created before the operating system, in 1983. Windows 1.0 appeared in 1985, and was not very successful. On computers with 8086 chips it froze and worked very slowly. The reason was optimization for new processors, Intel 80286. Although many PCs continued to install old CPUs.
A little later, version 2.0 was released, and then Windows 2.1. The main differences between the systems and the first one are overlapping windows. The real change came with the advent of Windows 3.0, which allowed DOS applications to run in separate windows. The performance of the clipboard has been improved and the number of operating modes has increased. The platform has been optimized for PCs with different amounts of memory:
- The basic mode required only 640 kilobytes to operate. Those same 640 KB, which, according to Gates, should be “enough for everyone.”
- Protected mode was intended for 2086 processors.
- The extended mode worked with 80386 processes.
After the update, the system became more popular. Every month the company earned millions of dollars from it. And Windows 95 sold 7,000,000 copies in the first two weeks alone. Since then, the operating system has continued to improve. And a few years ago they even released a special mobile version, Windows Phone.
Since the mid-1990s, Gates has changed the company's policy, emphasizing not only programs, but also Internet research. At the same time, he wrote the book “The Road to the Future,” dedicated to his vision of new technologies. In 2008, Bill resigned as head of the company. Although he continues to remain a member of its Board of Directors.
Created a program to get into classes with beautiful girls
Having learned about Bill Gates' abilities, the school management invited him to write a program that would automatically generate classes and schedules.
Bill created the program together with Paul Allen. Young programmers even received a reward of $4,200. But the benefits didn't end there.
The schedule turned out to be such that Bill mysteriously found himself in classes exclusively in a female group of beautiful classmates.
Gates had another company before founding Microsoft.
Paul Allen, Bill Gates and their friend Paul Gilbert started their first company when Gates was 17 years old. The company was called Traf-O-Data and was engaged in the distribution of meters for traffic analysis. For this work, the young people earned $20,000.
In the same year, Bill Gates received an order to write software for the distribution of energy at the Bonneville Dam. For his annual work, the young businessman received $30,000.
Charity
23 years after the release of the first Windows operating system, Gates is leaving key positions at the company. The share of his shares by that time was a little over 8%, given the colossal market capitalization, this was a lot. But he did not limit himself to Microsoft alone.
His friendship with Warren Buffett is well known, he even had a position in his Berkshire Hathaway. The diversification of assets allowed Gates to constantly increase his wealth; for a very long time he remained the richest person on earth - two long periods of time 1996-2007 and 2009-2016. But this could not be called the billionaire’s main life goal; over time, he came to the conclusion that it was worth giving a significant part of his capital to charity and encouraged many other wealthy people to do the same.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett
He did not limit himself to just words; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, created by the family, received from the creator himself over the entire period of its existence more than $30 billion. This is a huge amount of money, and if you take into account how much money is still planned to be left for charity, the figure comes out to be close to 100 billion. This is already more than the budgets of many countries.
With all this, Bill Gates has never been subject to the evil influence of wealth; he does not have golden toilets and 170-meter yachts. Simply because he doesn't see the point in it. A person who could buy everything he wants leads a normal life, actively participates in various events and tries in every possible way to help others. This is paradoxical, but in essence he returns to society part of the funds that this same society spends on its products. A good example of how you can remain a good person with a lot of money.
The founder of Microsoft did not receive an education right away
In 1973, Bill Gates entered Harvard University and planned to follow in the footsteps of his lawyer father, which is why he chose law courses. But soon he got tired of his studies and 2 years after the start of his studies he was expelled for absenteeism.
When he left, he told his teachers that he would become a millionaire by the age of 30. Bill Gates became a billionaire at age 31.
But he still did not remain without education. In 2007, the rector of Harvard University presented Bill Gates with a diploma of higher education. This was beneficial for both parties:
- Harvard can now safely say that one of the richest people in the world, the creator of Microsoft Corporation and philanthropist is its graduate.
- Bill Gates received a memorable gift and fulfilled the promise he made to his father to obtain a diploma.
As you can see, higher education is not always the key to success and there are many such examples.
Bill Gates now
In 2020, Bill Gates' predictions regarding the deadliest threat to humanity came true. For several years, he has repeatedly spoken about the possibility of a pandemic that could claim millions of lives. Ironically, it was Gates who was blamed by conspiracy theorists for the global coronavirus epidemic. Allegedly, as a supporter of universal vaccination, he was a person interested in the mass disease.
Bill Gates now
Of course, this is nothing more than speculation that does not stand up to criticism. In turn, Gates closely studied the problem with coronavirus, sponsored the development of a vaccine and made a disappointing forecast that humanity would return to normal life no earlier than in 1-2 years.
Gates has been behind bars three times
You might be surprised, but Bill Gates loves driving fast. He was repeatedly detained and arrested for violating traffic rules, driving without a license and arguing with the police.
- The first case occurred in 1975 . Bill not only drove around Albuquerque without a driver's license, but also began arguing with the police. That's how he went to jail for the first time. Gates called Allen and asked for help, and he raised the last of his money to rescue Bill.
- The first lesson was in vain and two years later history repeated itself. In 1977 , he was again arrested for driving without a driver's license, and running a red light was added to this violation.
- Well, the third time happened 12 years later. In 1989 , he was arrested for drunk driving. But he still learned a lesson, because the third time he already had his license.
Photo gallery: The luxurious life of Bill Gates Editorial material
Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle. His mother is a school teacher and his father is a lawyer.
Gates graduated from Lakeside Private School, where he met Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft.
In 1973, Gates entered Harvard, which, however, he never graduated from. At university he met Steve Ballmer.
At the same time, Gates and his partners began developing software for the MITS Altair, the first personal computer. In 1977, Gates and Allen moved to Albuquerque and founded a software development company. Microsoft's first 11 employees:
The first version of Windows was released in 1985. By 1987, 31-year-old Gates had become a billionaire.
In 1995, Gates became the richest person in the world, with an estimated fortune of $12.9 billion.
After Gates married his employee, the young family moved to Medina, Washington, into a $121 million home with 24 bedrooms and a 23-car garage.
Gates' house has its own library with rare books. For example, a manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci dating from the 15th century. Gates purchased it for $30.8 million in 1994.
In addition, Gates is a fan of painting. In 1998, he purchased a painting by Winslow Homer for $36 million. His collection also includes works by American artists Andrew Wyeth and William Meritt Chase.
In 2013, Gates purchased a house in Florida for $8.7 million. In addition to the residential part, there is a stable on its territory.
In 2014, Gates bought a 228-acre farm in California. The Microsoft founder paid about $18 million for it.
The ranch includes a racing track, a guest house, an office, a veterinary clinic, an orchard and five barns.
Gates and his son often visit various scientific exhibitions, technical structures, and museums. For example, the founder of Microsoft visited the Large Hadron Collider.
Another favorite place for Gates is the Apussuit Adventure Camp ski resort in Greenland. The resort only serves a few people and has no lifts.
The Microsoft founder is a well-known sports car fan. At various times, Gates drove a Porsche 930 Turbo, Mercedes, Jaguar XJ6, Carrera Cabriolet 964, Ferrari 348. At the dawn of Microsoft, Gates bought a 1979 Porsche 911, which he raced in the desert.
Paul Allen had to rescue Gates from prison after he was arrested for one of these races. A Porsche 911 was sold at auction for $80,000 in 2012.
Photo from the police station where Gates was booked for a traffic violation back in 1977
In the late 90s, Gates bought a Porsche 959. However, customs officials did not release the German car due to the fact that the car did not meet EPA standards. Because of this, the Microsoft founder, along with other Porsche owners, entered into a public debate with the Clinton administration about importing foreign cars.
After leaving Microsoft, Gates and his wife became involved in charity work. His foundation funds educational programs around the world.
In 1997, Gates purchased a private jet for $21 million.
The Microsoft founder typically rents the $330 million yacht Sirena, which costs him $5 million a week.
In 2010, Bill Gates and his friend Warren Buffett launched The Giving Pledge, a proposal for billionaires to donate half of their wealth to philanthropy. Paul Allen, Larry Ellison, and Mark Zuckerberg joined the initiative.
Children will inherit only a small share of all wealth
One of the richest men in the world will leave his children without a multi-billion-dollar inheritance. He has three children and each of them will receive 10 million dollars (as of 04/05/2020, according to Forbes, this amount is 0.01% of Bill Gates’ fortune ). The remaining funds will go to charitable purposes.
Instead of a huge fortune, the Gates children will receive a good education, which, according to their parents, will help them discover their abilities and make the right choice in life.
Bill Gates believes that conditions for all children should be the same, regardless of where they were born.
Special rules regarding gadgets
- In 2012, Melinda Gates said in an interview that their children were prohibited from using Apple products.
- It is also known that Bill Gates prohibited children from using smartphones until they were 14 years old. But even after 14 there are restrictions. The family sets a time after which mobile devices cannot be used.
According to the head of the family, such restrictions help protect children from the negative influence of electronic gadgets.
Addition
Here are some more interesting facts that were not included in the top 10.
- Surprisingly, such a smart person as Bill Gates does not know foreign languages . In one interview, he admitted that his biggest regret was this omission. Bill Gates also identified 3 languages that he would like to learn: French, Arabic and Chinese.
- Bill Gates is known for reading constantly and a lot. In one of his interviews, he said that he reads about 50 books a year . It turns out that every week Bill studies at least one book.
- The American corporation McDonald's gave Bill Gates its gold card , which allows you to eat for free around the world at any restaurant in this chain for the rest of your life.
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Material updated 05/23/2020 at 03:57
