Juan Escobedo

Bill Gates-How he affected the Computer World
Bill Gates was born on October 28 1955 in Seattle. His mother was a local teacher who eventually became a board member of several banks. His father, William H. Gates was a successful corporate lawyer. Since a young age Gates showed tremendous potential as an student, and by the age of 13 his parents enrolled him in Seattle’s Lakeside Preparatory School, they thought Gates was not being challenged enough by the public school system. It was in Lakeside where he met Paul Allen who would help him found Microsoft. Gates excelled in every course while at school.
Gates was first introduced to computers when a computer company offered to provide computer time for students; this is where his love for technology sparked. At the age of 13 he developed a computer program, ‘The program was a tic-tac-toe game where users could play against the computer”1. Paul Allen and Bill Gates became very close friends despite their age difference, sharing the same love for computers they quickly bonded. During his time in Lakeside he developed a program for the school to allow students to schedule classes; Gates then used it to his advantage by “modifying the program so he would only be placed in classes with a majority female students”2
By the age of 17 he went into his first business venture with Paul Allen developing a computer program called “Traf-o-Data which is a computer program that monitored traffic patterns in Seattle”3
Gates plans were to leave school after graduating from Lakeside and dedicate full time to computers, but his parents forced him into going to college. After getting an almost perfect ACT score Gates was accepted into Harvard University. Spending most of his time in the computer lab he never really focused in school. He dropped out of Harvard after his freshman year and got a summer job at Honeywell, alongside his good friend Paul Allen. During his time at Harvard Gates made many people that would end up playing an important role on Microsoft later on.
In 1975 Bill Gates had a life changing moment when he read a newspaper article about a company in New Mexico that made the “Altair 8800: Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems”4After reading the article Allen and Gates became even more interested in personal computers. A couple of days later they made a call to MITS and lied about working on a computer program that could be used on the Altair, fortunately for them, MITS was interested on the type of program they proposed. Allen and Gates ended up developing a program software for the Altair after being hired by MITS. Not even a year later, “Microsoft” was founded.
The rest is history; Microsoft went on to become one of the most successful firms in the tech industry. Bill Gates revolutionized the computer world by making software available to the average user. Before Gates came into the computer world, software was very complicated to use and it was extremely expensive making it impossible for an average person to even think about owning a computer. Gates had the vision of making the computer industry something affordable for everybody and much easier to use.
Making software available to the average user was probably the biggest impact Gates had on the computer world, as his programs would become some of the everyday needs for some of the most important companies around the world, “Microsoft provided the tools that allow me to produce quality work and improve the efficiency with which I can do it through applications such as Visio and Office”5
Bill Gates and Microsoft turned the computer world around completely. Before Gates software used to bundled with hardware, he separated them and with the