Bill Gates Essay, Research Paper

(THIS PAPER WAS WRITTEN BY SOMEONE ELSE AND IS ALREADY ON THE DATABASE, I SIMPLY REVISED AND EDITED IT APPROPRIATELY!)

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Bill Gates

By: Aaron

Bill Gates Biographical Research Paper April 28, 1997 William Henry Gates, III

was born October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington. He was the middle child of

three born to William and Mary Gates. ATrey, as he was called because of the

III, was sent to a private school by his father, a lawyer, and mother, a former

teacher now on several prestigious boards (Moritz, 238). At age 13, Bill had

completely taught himself programming after taking a computer studies class.

After scoring a perfect 800 on the mathematics half of the SAT, he graduated from

Lakeside school and enrolled at Harvard University as a pre-law major. As a

student Gates was a wonder. He received an A in an economics class without

attending and cramming the night before the final exam. In June 1975, Bill Gates

dropped out of Harvard to pursue a career in computers full time. Later that year

after dropping out of Harvard he moved to New Mexico. There, he and Allen Kay

established Microsoft to produce their Basic for the MITS. Eighteen months later

they were a few hundred thousand dollars richer and were hired by Tandy to

develop software for its radio shack computers. Gates and Allen then moved their

headquarters to Seattle, Washington. In Seattle, Gates re-wrote an operating system

and called it MS-DOS, which stands for Microsoft Disk Operating System.

Microsoft would eventually sell the rights of MS-DOS to IBM, making it a major

computer corporation. Other computer companies wanted Microsoft to produce

software for their computers, including Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple

computers. With the operating system established, Gates and Microsoft set out to

create applications software, for tasks such as financial analysis or word

processing. Microsoft has continued being successful through the years and will be

in the future as long as it keeps innovating new and exciting computer software.

Bill Gates has his eye on the future. He sees the world in a powerful, high-speed

network, both within companies and across the so called Information

Superhighway (Brandt, 57). He hopes to be on top of the transformation from

personal computers to nets. Gates predicts that an explosion of low-cost, high-

capacity, networks will radically alter how we use technology in the upcoming

decade. Now before Bill Gates came onto the scene in the early seventies, the main

focus in the computer world was hardware. Chips, circuit boards, capacitors and

controllers these were what computers were all about at this time. Companies like

IBM, Compaq and Apple were at the head of the pack in the industry that pushed

hefty boxes of metal, plastic, and silicon at thousands of dollars each. (Manes, 4)

4) No one had yet attempted to tap the software business, a market that was

inevitably going to grow as fast or faster than its complimentary hardware market.

Bill gates saw this opportunity and took advantage of it. When William Henry

Gates came into the world in the year 1955, the fledgling computer industry was

still trying to spread its wings and fly. On the day he was born in 1955, fewer

than 500 electronic computers had existed in the entire world, their total retail

value amounted to less then $200 million, and the term software had not yet

been coined. (Manes, 2) Bill first laid a hand on a computer in 1968 while in

junior high school. The computer business was rapidly transforming at this time,

and so was Bill Gates. He saw the real profitable side of computers was not their

hardware. Rather it was the software end of the business. Good software is what

makes a computer exciting and easy to use. Bill Gates grabbed this concept and ran

with it. The result: As of 1993, Gates was personally worth more than $2

billion, and his company, Microsoft, was valued at more than $7

billion. (Manes, 2) As Microsoft and the software industry grew, the computer

hardware manufacturers no longer saw the opportunity to exploit Bill Gates=

company, as they had done initially with BASIC, one of the first programs

Microsoft produced. Rather, they saw Bill Gates and Microsoft as the Controller of

their destinies. Microsoft software had become so popular that if your hardware

could not run it, you were certain of defeat. Throughout the early 80’s, Bill was the

ruler of the computer industry. His decisions on which machines to back and

which to ignore helped to make companies and break them. Heads of firms that

created computers and microprocessors regularly make pilgrimages to Microsoft’s

wooded headquarters in Redmond, Washington, to sit at the feet of the

Master. (Manes, 4) In 1986, Microsoft again revolutionized the computer industry

And launched its first version of Windows. Microsoft called Windows an

operating environment, meaning it was designed mainly to run other programs.

The difference between this system and the original BASIC language was that

Windows incorporated a Graphical user interface or GUI, (pronounced as

gooey) as it was known in the industry. This interface gave a symbolic

representation of a desktop to every computer screen across the country, complete

with little pictures called icons to signify different files and programs. Opening

these files and programs was like opening different windows, hence the name.

Finally, non-Macintosh personal computers had become user friendly; no longer

was it seen by the majority of the consuming public as a cold, high-tech piece of

equipment whose secrets could only be unlocked by some alien script. The first

seven years after the announcement of windows, however, was not exactly smooth

sailing for Bill Gates and Microsoft. Over those seven years, the windows story

had been one of tepid reviews, backhanding compliments, empty hype, sluggish

sales. (Manes, 7) If these problems were not enough, in the same period, Apple

computer, headed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, had sued Microsoft accusing

the company of stealing their Macintosh ideas for the Windows application.

Despite all of these setbacks, Windows finally caught on and spread like wildfire.

Since its introduction, Microsoft has introduced numerous updated versions of the

original windows application software, the most recent being Windows 95. Like

the introduction of the original Windows program; however, the Windows 95

version was anything but smooth. Microsoft again found itself in another legal

battle, but this time it was up against the U.S. Justice Department. Although the

department will confirm only that it is conducting an unspecified investigation in

the computer industry, it appears to have launched three antitrust probes into Bill

Gates’ empire. reported the June 24, 1995 issue of the Economic magazine. (The

Economist, 59) The basis behind these probes was focused upon possible misuse of

licensing agreements and royalty fees by Microsoft with many personal computer

makers. Just as the operating software of Bill Gates and Microsoft become the

standard of personal computers, so would Mr. Gates like to dominate the software

end of the up and coming multimedia market. This market spans from virtual

reality video games to interactive multimedia programming on cable television. To

begin its movement into this market, Gates now has a contract to a supply software

to Sega, a Japanese video-games maker whose central character, a hyperactive

hedgehog called Sonic, is the industry’s hottest property. In addition to Sega,

Mr. Gates has also been talking to Time Warner and TCI about forming a

venture, to be known as CableSoft, that should set standards for interactive

TV. (The Economist, 73) Bill Gates and his company Microsoft have been at the

head of the rapidly changing computer industry for much of its existence. If profit

margins and stock prices continue to grow and Microsoft products continue to be

household names, the duo will remain in this position will into the future.

Bibliography 1. Manes, Stephen; Andrews, Paul; Gates – How Microsoft=s Mogul Reinvented An Industry – And Made Himself The Richest Man In America. Doubleday 1993 2. A Trojan hedgehog, The Economist. January 22, 1994, p.73-74 3. High noon for Billy the Kid?, The Economist. June 24, 1995, P.59-60 4. Bitter, Gary G. William H. Gates. Macmillan Encyclopedia of Computers. Macmillan Publishing: New York, NY, 1992, P.409-410. 5. Brandt, Richard. Bill Gate’s Vision. Business Week. June 27, 1994, P.56-62. 6. Moritz, Charles. William Gates. Current Biography. H.W. Wilson Company: New York, NY, 1991, P.237-241.