Bill Gates Life: A Trivial Timeline

"I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it." 

Bill Gates, Microsoft Co-founder

Bill Gates' Life

A trivial timeline 

1955 Gates was born

In Seattle, Washington, Gates was born as “William Henry Gates III” on 28^th October 1955

1968 Writes his first program

At 13-years old, Gates wrote his first program, a version of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play against the computer

1975 Leaves Harvard

Gates attended Harvard University of two years, studying law, but also took math and computer-science courses during his time there.

1975 Starts Microsoft

Gates co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen. Originally spelt ‘Micro-Soft’, the hyphen was removed within a year.

1977 Arrested for a traffic violation

A smiling, 22-year old Gates was arrested for a traffic violation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The details of the violation have since been lost…

1980 Sells PC DOS to IBM

After conversations between IBM and Digital research went badly regarding an operating system, Gates offered PC DOS to IBM for a single fee of $50,000. However, Gates did not give the copyright to IBM, believing that IBM’s computer system would be replicated. He was correct and the sales of MS-DOS surged.

1985 Microsoft launches Windows

The first retail version of the Windows was released in November 1985.

1987 Listed in Forbes 400 Richest People in America

In 1987, Gates was worth $1.25 billion and at the time, the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.

1995 The Road Ahead

Alongside Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson, Gates wrote ‘The Road Ahead.’ The book described the future of personal computing and the effect it would have on people’s lives. If you’d like to be notified when the free pdf summary for his book is released you can join the mailing list from the box above.

1997 Has a flower fly named in his honour

Entomologists name the “Bill Gates’ Flower Fly” in Gates’ honour. Another fly was named after Paul Allen, Gates’ friend.

2010 Announces ‘The Giving Pledge’ with Warren Buffett

The organisation’s goal is to inspire wealthy people to give away, at least half of their net-worth before they pass away

2017 Jeff Bezos surpasses Bill Gates in wealth

In July and October 2017, Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder) surpassed Gates as the richest person in the world.

This timeline has been a brief list of Bill Gates’ many notable achievements.

You can find out more about Bill Gates from the sources used to build this timeline:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_gates
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge
• https://givingpledge.org/