Bill Gates

My hero doesn´t come from my country. He comes from the USA, but is also important to my country. His name is Bill Gates.

He was born on October 28, 1955 with full name William Henry Gates. He grew up in Seattle. As a child he didn´t have many friends. He attended public elementary school, where he quickly surpassed all of his abilities. His parents recognized his intelligence and decided to enroll him into a private school. With 13 he made his first computer program. Four years later, he and his friend Paul Allen formed their own company (Traf-O-Data), to make traffic counters.

He attended Harvard University. He studied law, because his father wanted that. He didn´t finish his studies, because he wanted to spend his time creating software. During the study he met Steve Ballmer, who is now Microsoft´s president.

Bill Gates (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/gallery/default.mspx)

Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) made the first microcomputer (Altair 8800), but it didn´t have software. Bill contacted MITS and they had business for him. He and Paul moved to Albuquerque and created their own computer company. They were making software for MITS. The company failed, so they moved to Washington. Here Bill made a deal with the International Business Machines (IBM) to create a version of operating system for personal computers. The first version of the Windows operating system debuted in 1985.

Microsoft is now a multinational computer corporation present all over the world. It has about 90.000 employees in 105 countries. The most important products are: Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Servers, Microsoft Windows Mobile…

Bill Gates is married and has three children. In 1994 he and his wife established their own Charitable Organization and they give much money to charity (education, world public health…). He was the richest person in the world two years ago. In the year 2008 he retired after 33 years of working and devotes all his time to the foundation projects. He wrote two books The Road Ahead (1995, his vision of information technology) and Business @ the Speed of Thought (1999, integration between business and technology).

Bill Gates is important to me, because he is one of the people who influenced the 20th century most. He started one of the best businesses in this world. He is also responsible for starting a PC revolution, because of him we have computers in our houses or offices. With his charity organization he helps other people all over the world. I also respect him because he started his business without money, but after many years of hardworking he became rich.