BILL GATES: America’s Richest Harvard Drop-Out

William H. Gates was born on October 28, 1955. The only son of William H. Gates II, Bill Gates the Third lived the life of any other normal Seattle boy. His mother, Mary Gates, was a strong advocate for education. She was a schoolteacher, served on the board of regents at the University of Washington, as well as serving as chairwoman of the United Way International. Young Bill attended a public elementary school and shortly thereafter found his passion for computer programming at the age of thirteen. Unbeknownst to his lawyer father and schoolteacher mother, their son was destined to become one most significant forces behind the growth of person computing and the software industry as a whole.
In 1973 Gates left home and began his freshmen year at Harvard University. It was here he made the acquaintance of Steve Ballmer, a fellow student who lived just down the hall from Bill. During his studies at Harvard, he continued his computer programming. According to the Bill Gates web site, he developed “a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer-the MITS Altair.”
After approximately two years of study at Harvard, Gates dropped out to pursue his vision of making computer technology a medium to be used by the average person on a daily basis. With the help of his boyhood friend, Paul Allen, Microsoft was born. Microsoft, destined for huge growth would later need a chief executive officer, Steve Ballmer, from the dorms would later fill this position. In the following years, they developed MS-DOS, which was the first operating system for the IBM personal computer. Microsoft has been largely responsible for the boom in computer technology in the past several decades. Operating systems such as Windows, Internet Explorer, and the MSNBC cable were all developments of the technology