William " Bill " Henry Gates III, born on 28 October 1955 at Seattle, in theState of Washington (United States), is a computer scientist and entrepreneur american, a pioneer in the field of micro-computing. Founded in 1975, at the age of 20 years, with his friend Paul Allen, the company of software of micro-computer Micro-Soft (now Microsoft). His company purchased the operating system QDOS to MS-DOS, and then designed the operating system Windows, both in a situation of quasi-monopoly in the world.
It is now, thanks to the commercial success of Microsoft, therichest man in the world from 1996 to 2007, and in 2009, 2014 and 2015. When he becomes the richest man in the world, according to the ranking Bloomberg, in January 2014, his fortune amounted to 78.5 billion us dollars1,2. In 2016, the magazine Forbes, which refers to it also as the richest man in the world at the head of a fortune of 76.8 billion u.s. dollars3.
Bill Gates devotes himself since October 2007 at its foundation, a humanitarian.
He was made a Knight of the British Empire (KBE) in 2005.
His father, William Henry Gates Sr is lawyer business. His mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, is professor and chair of the management of some companies and banks of the United Way of America.
Bill Gates discovered thecomputer at the very selective Lakeside School of Seattle, which has a PDP-10 to be rented. There he made with his childhood friend Paul Allen his first computer program : a game of tic-tac-toe.
In 1968, at the age of 13 years, he founded, with Allen and a few other friends, the Lakeside Programmers Group. A few companies will make use of their talents, mainly to improve systems and existing applications written in assembler language.
In 1973, Gates entered theHarvard university at the age of 18 years. There he meets Steve Ballmer, the future CEO of Microsoft. He rapidly abandoned his studies to devote himself to computer programming.
The Microsoft company
First success : Altair BASIC
Bill Gates to Copenhagen in 2004
Bill Gates co-directed with Allen a interpreter BASIC for theAltair 8800. This realization is both a tour de force and a stroke of luck : the development is done entirely on the PDP-10 and theAltair BASIC is tested on a real Altair 8800 as the day of the demonstration, which succeeded perfectly. The Altair BASIC mark a milestone in the history of the micro-computer : this will be the first programming language to have worked on a micro-computer commercial. This will also be the first software published by the company Microcomputer Software, founded for the occasion, in 1975, when Bill Gates age 20 years, and whose contraction Micro-Soft and Microsoft is now more familiar.
The 3 February 1976, Bill Gates writes a letter titled "an Open Letter to Hobbyists " (" open Letter to hobbyists "), in which he condemns for the first time the illegal sharing of any of its software, the BASIC Altair : " We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft. " (" we have written 6800 BASIC, and we write the 8080 and 6800 APL, but we did not want to provide this software to the amateurs.To be clear, what you are doing, it is theft ").
The partnership with IBM : MS-DOS, Windows
In 1980, Microsoft signed an agreement with IBM to develop an operating system to market with every personal computer IBM PC. MS-DOS is sold in the United States from the 12 August 1981. This is a modified version of another product : Microsoft, 6 January 1981, acquired the operating rights for 86-DOS to the company Seattle Computer Products (SCP)4, and then the 22 July 1981 has entered into a marketing agreement5 with the company's SCP that allows Microsoft to present the product as his own, and SCP to receive royalties on the sales volume, every company can develop the product independently. The agreement already included a version for multiple users.
His fortune is made, and a never-ending to grow to record levels. Bill Gates is convinced that one day all of the homes and the professional world will be equipped withpersonal computers. IBM is far from being the first on the market : Apple, among others, had already launched on this market four years ago with a smash hit. The weight of IBM is of paramount importance for the take-off of MS-DOS.
Privacy
The home of the Gates family
The 1st January 1994, he married Melinda French, a marketing manager of Microsoft, with whom he had two daughters prénommées, Jennifer Katharine (born 1996) and Phoebe Adele (born in 2002) and a son, Rory John (born 1999). He moved with his family to the edge of lake Washington, near Seattle, in a house estimated to be 113 million dollars6.
From Windows 95 to the resignation operational
Bill Gates speech in a conference at the Sorbonne in Paris in 2008
Microsoft is evolving at the breakneck pace of micro-computers, its operating system and its suite of office software Microsoft Office, word processing, spreadsheet, database, utilities, games, etc, In 1985, Windows was then, and for 10 years still, a simple graphical user interface, the operating system remaining MS-DOS. The success makes for a very long time to come for the first versions of Windows, the interface is graphically very little sophisticated and use far from intuitive ([1]). Windows, however, is already become the operating system the most sold in the world, and made the fortune of Microsoft and its shareholders, with a right of way on the world market coalescing around 90 % to the point of threatening a lawsuit for monopoly and a serious threat of dissolution of the company in the years 2000.
In 1986, Microsoft made its entry into the stock Exchange. Investors will welcome with enthusiasm : on the same day, Bill Gates becomes a billionaire. It will become the richest man in the world ten years later in 1996. According to the magazine Forbes, his personal fortune was in 2007 estimated at 56 billion dollars (see list of billionaires of the world). Its shares in the company Microsoft, which he holds in 2005 a little less than 10 % of the capital, constitute approximately 50 % of his fortune.
Although few companies have had an image linked so strongly to their founder, although he has often been compared to Henry Ford and William Rockefeller, who were, like him, the source of new economic areas (private vehicles and industry in oil), and also of the excesses of the consumer society. It is as a great figure of the market as it undergoes its entartage by Noël Godin and his cronies, 1998, Brussels7.
In November 2004, Steve Ballmer indicates that Bill Gates is probably the person most spammée in the world, as it receives 4 million e-mails per day. A service of Microsoft is at this time dedicated to sorting through this mass, mainly composed of spam, and with only ten messages per day finally arrived to Bill Gates8.
The 15 June 2006, Bill Gates announced that from July 2008 it will no longer handle the day to day business of Microsoft. He will remain in his position and will advise certain projects but will focus on the charitable works of9. It leaves all of the operational functions within Microsoft the 27 June 200810. On 4 February 2014, Bill Gates announced that he abandons also the chair of the board of directors of Microsoft11.
In 2000, he created the Fondation Bill-et-Melinda-Gates foundation, which aims to provide the world's population of innovations in the field of health and acquisition of knowledge. It has some 102,8 billions of dollars.
The Gates Foundation has already spent 25,26 billion dollars12, in particular to vaccinate 55 million children. It has also announced that it wants to bequeath 95 % of his fortune to his foundation.
These actions have contributed to the magazine Time refers to Bill Gates " Man of the year 2005 ", alongside his wife Melinda and Bono (the lead singer of the band U2), for their actions on the forehead of philanthropy.
The 2 march 2005, Bill Gates knighted by queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom to the rank of Knight commander of the order of the british Empire for his contribution to british business and to the efforts to combat poverty in the world. However, not being a citizen of a country of the Commonwealth, it may prepend its name from the title Sir. It can, however, add the letters KBE (Knight of the British Empire/Knight of the british Empire) after his name.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The majority of the legacy of Bill Gates should return to its Foundation, by which he became one of the largest donors against the poverty in the world, with several billion dollars of his personal fortune. In 2006, he announced that he léguerait 95 % of his fortune to the fight against disease andilliteracy in the countries of the South.
On June 16, 2010, Bill Gates and his wife are launching a campaign, The Giving Pledge, and his website givingpledge.org13, where the billionaires are invited to make promises of a donation in excess of 50 % of their personal fortune14. Warren Buffett wrote the first letter in which he indicated his intention to bequeath more than 99 % of his fortune. Bill Gates believes that " only 15% of the billionaires are donating large parts of their wealth "15. This approach comes at a time when the Americans, the wealthy are singled out as being at the origin of the crisis and where theFondation Bill-et-Melinda-Gates is also the subject of controversy16.
In November 2011, Bill Gates called on the G20 to increase aid to poor countries17.
In the framework of the education reform brought by the government of Barack Obama, Bill Gates work including the implementation of the program " Common Core " that it has massively subsidized18.
Investments
Bill Gates has expressed his interest in geo-engineering. He is particularly interested in the capture of the carbon dioxide in the air and on the dispersion of sulfur aerosols19.
It has also shown an interest in meat substitutes, bringing in 2013 its support to the company Beyond Meat ; having tried a product-based plant of the company attempting to imitate the look and taste of the chicken meat, Bill Gates reportedly said that he "could not tell the difference between the chicken Beyond Meat and real chicken"20,21.
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