There is one turning point that happened within the last forty years that the average person has over looked. The turning point I"m talking about is the beginning of the computer era. It's amazing how much computers have affected our lives. Everyday we come in contact with something that is either computerized or is a computer itself. Believe it or not Bill Gates probably had something to do with it. He designed the operating systems that our personal computers use today. Bill Gates has revolutionized the computer industry and has changed our lives forever.
Bill Gates experienced a relatively normal childhood, growing up with two sisters and attending a public school until seventh grade (Gates 1). William H. Gates II, Bill's father, is an Attorney in Seattle (MS 1). Mary Gates was a schoolteacher, a board member at the University of Washington, and chairwoman of United Way International (MS 1).
At the age of thirteen Bill's parents decided to enroll him into the private Lakeside school for seventh grade (Gates 2). That year Lakeside bought a Teletype computer, which intrigued him into the computer field (Gates 2). This was all going on in 1968 which at that time most people didn't know what a computer was much less have access to one. Bill and his friends talked a local computer company into letting them have access to one of their new minicomputers so that they could program and have hands on experience with the latest technology. This is where Bill spent most of his free time and how he learned how to program in many languages. With all this programming time Bill and his friend Paul Allen founded Traf-O-Data, which was a company that design computerized car counters (Gates 2). This was Bill's first time he had his hand in the computer industry.
In 1975 Bill went on to college at Harvard where he continued his computer programming with his friend Paul (Gates 3). They together developed an operating system for the first personal computer, the Altair 8800.