Bill Gates

William H. Gates III Biographical Essay

Uploaded by surfchick (2074) on Jan 5, 2005

William H. Gates III (Bill Gates) Biography

On October 28, 1955 William H. Gates III (nicknamed "trey") was born in Seattle. His father was a lawyer (William H. Gates II) and his mother was a schoolteacher. He also had two older sisters who were in high school when Bill was born. Bill attended a public elementary school before he moved to a private school in North Seattle named Lakeside. Lakeside's strong academics enabled Bill to actively get involved with computers (which were the love of his life next to baseball) and use his superior intellect. This was the beginning of a long and successful career in computers. Bill combined his intellect and visions of technology along with his active participation in may charities to make our world a better place.

He was born with a long family history of business, politics and community services. His grand father was the vice president of a national bank, and his father was a prominent lawyer. Early in life it was obvious that Bill Gates inherited the ambition, intelligence and competitive spirits that helped the rest of his family rise to the top in their chosen professions. In elementary school he quickly surpassed all of his peer's abilities in nearly all subjects, especially in math and science. His parents recognized his intelligence and decided to enroll him in Lakeside, a private school known for its intense academic environment.

It was at Lakeside that he was first introduced to computers. In the spring of 1968 the Lakeside Prep School concluded that it should acquaint the student body with the world of computers. They were still too large and costly for the school to purchase it's own, so instead they had a fund raiser and bought computer time on a DEC PDP-10 owned by General Electric. A few thousand dollars were raised which the school figured would buy more than enough time to last into the next school year. But they had drastically underestimated the amount of students that would be addicted to this machine.

With in a week all of the school's computer time had been used up. Bill and his friends went to places that made computers and finally found a company that would let them use their computers for free, but they had to record all the times that the computers crashed and exactly what happened so they could fix it. Then they started to tamper with the computer files and changed the data that stated how much time they had been on the computers. They were caught and got in big trouble. Weeks later the company had financial problems and went out of business.

When he was 14 he began programming for a new company that made computers. He was working with a best friend named Mike who was involved in playing sports at The YMCA. One day when they were almost done with their new operating system that they were developing, Mike got into an accident at the YMCA while climbing rocks. He fell from several stories right on to his head. Days later he died. Bill or "trey" as he was called had no one to help him finish the operating