Bill Gates

Bill Gates

Many great Americans throughout our history have contributed tremendously to the way we live our lives today, for example those who have contributed in improving technology. Technology is something people use on a daily basis and only certain Americans have been recognized in their efforts to improve it. Bill Gates is one of the Americans that have contributed greatly to the world of technology; he is the chairman and chief architect for the Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft is the worldwide leader of software, services, and solutions that has helped many people with their businesses and everyday life.

Bill Gates was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28, 1955 he attended a public elementary school and then went on into a private school where he began to take interest in software and began programming computers at the age of thirteen. Bill Gates then started his contribution to new technology when he entered Harvard University in 1973, while he was at Harvard; Gates was able to develop a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer the MITS Altair. In Gates third year at Harvard he decided to drop out to pursue a career in software development. In 1975 Gates began Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Both Gates and Allen had the motivation and belief that computers would be a valuable source for every office desk and at every home, with this in mind they began to develop software for personal computers.

Microsoft went from a small role to one of the major software vendors in the home computer business. In the early 1980's Paul Allen and Bill Gates created Microsoft Windows. By the late 1980's Microsoft windows started to become large with the IBM-compatible PC software market. In 1990 Windows 3.0 was released and it became a huge success selling about 10 million copies in the first two years that it came out, it also was proved that Microsoft had supremacy in operating systems. Microsoft then became known as one of the largest software company in the world, which made Bill Gates one of the richest people in the world for a couple years.

Bill Gates married his wife Melinda French in January of 1994 they had three children Katharine Gates, Rory John Gates, and Phoebe Adele Gates. In the year 2000 Gates and wife Melinda founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which is a charitaible foundation. The foundation has provided funds for college scholarships for under represented minorities,AIDS prevention, diseases prevention in third world coutries. The foundations also has given more then $3.6 billion to organizations in global health, more then $2 billion to improve learning opportunites, more than $477 million to community projects