This is the story about Bill Gates and the evolution of Microsoft Corporation. It details how he turned Microsoft into the largest software company in the world. How did this Harvard dropout become the youngest self-made billionaire in history?.
The Young Bill Gates.
It is impossible to write about the history of Microsoft without mentioning the name of Bill Gates, the founder and leader of Microsoft Corporation. Bill Gates was born William Henry Gates III on October 28, 1955. Raised in Seattle, Washington, in a family with a rich history in business, politics, and community service, he led a comfortable upper middle class life. In elementary school, Bill Gates excelled, especially in the subjects of math and science. In 1968, his parents enrolled him in The Lakeside Prep School, where the atmosphere was intellectual enough to stimulate him. .
Discovering a love for computers.
Attending Lakeside was a pivotal to his future because it was there that he discovered computers. At that time, computers were too large and expensive for the school to purchase one of its own so the school had a fundraiser and bought computer time from various corporations. Bill Gates, his friend Paul Allen and a few other students quickly took to computing. In fact, they began to skip classes, turning in their homework late, and using up all of the school's computer time rather quickly. Since one of the chief programmers of Computer Center Corporation had a child enrolled in the school, a deal was made to provide computer time to Lakeside's students.
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They started to hack Computer Center's system, and altered and crashed valuable files until they were banned from the computer. Soon, however, Bill and his friends were actually hired by the computer company to find bugs and explore weaknesses in the system, which kept causing the computers to crash. Instead of paying the boys for their services, they were given unlimited computer time.