![]() ![]() The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured the new Altair 8800, and alerted Bill Gates and Paul Allen that the era of the personal computer was beginning. ![]() Gates and Paul Allen closely followed events in the computer industry and foresaw that the development of microprocessors would lead to the creation of compact affordable, personal computer that would someday supplant the bulky mainframe systems used in business and industry. Although they were all precociously gifted programmers, it became clear that Gates had a unique talent for business as well, and he quickly emerged as the leader of the group. Soon Gates and his friends were working part-time and summers, writing computer programs for large businesses around the Seattle area. He and a small group of friends, including his future business partner Paul Allen, took every opportunity to explore the possibilities of the new technology, teaching themselves the basics of computer programming. The school acquired a computer terminal, and young Bill Gates was immediately fascinated. When he was 13, his parents believed he was not being challenged in his public school and enrolled him in the private and highly demanding Lakeside School. He was a notably gifted student who did well in all subjects but showed a special aptitude for mathematics. His father was a successful attorney, and it was expected that young Bill would follow in his father’s footsteps. Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington, the second of three children, in between an older and a younger sister. That makes us optimistic.OctoMicrosoft CEO Bill Gates, 1983. The number of children who die each year before their fifth birthday. We’d like to leave you with one chart we find most hopeful. How do we know? We are committed to measuring progress so we can see what’s working and what isn’t. Our foundation has spent $53.8 billion since 2000, and we think that’s helped our partners make a difference. And when our good friend Warren Buffett donated much of his fortune to our foundation, it allowed us to raise our ambitions about taking on the toughest, most important problems. We devoted more and more time to its work until we were both doing it full-time. We also expanded our work in the United States from providing access to computers and the Internet to making sure that every student had an equal opportunity to learn, graduate, and succeed.Īs our commitment to our work grew, we transferred $20 billion of Microsoft stock to our foundation, making it the largest of its kind in the world. We tried to figure out how we might use our voices to raise the visibility of global health, and how our resources could start saving and transforming lives. We started consulting experts, learning from locals in the countries where we wanted to work, and researching disease and poverty more deeply. Those eight words changed the rest of our lives. with a note:ĭad, maybe we can do something about this. If there’s anything worse than the death of a child, we said to each other, then surely, it’s the preventable death of a child. As new parents it hit us especially hard. One day, we read a newspaper article about millions of children in poor countries who die from diseases, such as diarrhea and pneumonia, that were easily treated in wealthier countries. As we read and traveled more, we also became curious about inequalities further from home. We were drawn to things that sprang from our experience, so we began donating PCs to public libraries across the United States to give everyone a chance to use one. ![]() The challenge when we started out was how to do that in a meaningful and high-impact way. That’s why we made the decision to donate our wealth from Microsoft to help others. Most importantly, we believe this: All lives have equal value. We wake up every day determined to use our resources to create a world where everyone has the opportunity to lead a healthy and productive life. Unfortunately, factors outside of anyone’s control make it hard for some people to reach their potential: things like when they were born, who their parents are, where they grew up, whether they are a boy or a girl. From early childhood, we each saw how our parents helped out in our local communities, and we were taught that anything is possible.
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