William H. Gates III

Bill Gates

On October 28, 1955, Bill Gates was born. His family is wealthy. Bill has an older and a younger sister, so he was a middle child. His sisters' names are Libby and Kristy. His mother, Mary Maxwell's father was J.W Maxwell. Bill’s father, William H. Gates, was a prominent lawyer. His mother served on board of directors for the First Interstate Bank and the United Way.

In 1975 Bill Gates dropped out of college to continue business with Paul Allen. They made a program language called BASIC. They made it to work with the Altair 8800. It took 5 months to develop this language. Paul decided to go to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to show the program to Ed Roberts a MITS (Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems) manager. Even on the plane Paul added the final touches to the program. As soon as Paul got there, he thought MITS was a huge organization. But Ed arrived in a DIRTY, DENTED, PICKUP TRUCK. Ed felt weird because he thought Paul would be much older. Unfortunately Paul did not have enough money to pay for the hotel room that MITS reserved. The head of MITS paid for the room.

The next morning Paul loaded the program into Ed’s Altair 8800 and after 15 minutes the Altair responded “Memory Size?” Paul entered “2+2” After another 5 minutes the program responded “4”. Ed was ready to strike a deal with Paul. But before he could accept anything he got on a plane and wanted to tell Bill the news. As soon as he got there and told Bill, they celebrated with ice cream and soda.

Microsoft was born after that deal with Ed Roberts. The program was a big hit. They got a lot of money. After that they made a software called: Microsoft Word. They also came up with a software called: Windows.

Bill married one of his employees, Melinda French. They are married to this day. They got married on January 1, 1994. They started a foundation called The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill is leaving Microsoft in 2008 because he wants to spend more time on the Foundation.

WINDOWS

In 1985 the first Windows was released. Computer users were amazed because Bill came up with new computers. In 1993 Microsoft came up with Microsoft BoB. Bob had a ton of new features. Like on your desktop pictures it says the time. And a weird dog talks to you. It has Microsoft Word built in it, and has Microsoft Paint. In 2001, Windows XP came out. The feature on that was: Have your own Desk top
User name
Password.

This year, 2007, Windows Vista came out. The features are the same as Windows XP but improved. The user name thing is cool because this has a password so no one will hack into it (unless someone in your family knows it). Windows Vista is new and improved Windows XP. The features in Vista are:

Username and password.
Change the Desktop look to make it your own
Comes with internet Explorer.
Comes with WeatherBug.

More on Bill’s Early Life
Bill’s Family is wealthy because, Mary, his mother‘s father was J.W. Maxwell. They’re all billionaires now because of Bill’s work of programming. If Bill had not gotten into computers they wouldn’t be rich and wealthy. In 1975 Bill dropped out of college to start Microsoft.