Bill Gates - historien bakom ett geni

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BILL GATES - The richest man in the world

We all grow up, knowing we can do anything we want. We can be anything we dream of, we’ll change the world!
Then, somewhere along the way, some of us seem to lose that determination. I think that is extremely sad, since determination is all we need to succeed.
One man who always held on tight to his motivation was William H. Gates, and I think his story deserves to be told.

William Gates, also know as Bill or Trey, was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, where he grew up in a family consisting of two sisters, his father William and his mother Mary. At five years old, Bill attended public elementary school, where he soon found mathematics and biology being the most interesting subjects. He spent the next seven years of his life working hard to get good grades, which he didn’t find very hard, since he really enjoyed reading. As a seven year old, he read The World Book Encyclopaedia from it’s start to the ending. Now that’s what I call being ambitious!
Bill’s older sister Kristi went to the eminent privateschool Lakeside, and when Bill turned 12, he sent in his application - and got in! He was really thrilled the day he joined his sister at the Lakeside School, where he soon began his career in personal computer software, programming computers at age 13. The first softwareprogram he ever invented was a simple computergame - "luffarschack" - which was a great success among his classmates. They gathered every lunchbreak around the huge, clumsy computer the school had invested in only a couple of months earlier, to play Bill’s amazing game. The computer didn’t have a screen, but it did have a printer connected to it, so the kids had to write down what moves they wanted to make on a keyboard, and then wait until it was printed out to see the results. Complicated, sure - but it was truly worth it. The principal noticed the increasing interest in young Gates’ work, and together with the local education authority he decided to buy some more computers. This was a very unusual decision back in the late 60’s, and a decision that Bill Gates was very grateful for.
Spending all his free hours in front of the computer, Bill was considered really brainy, and - sadly enough - really geeky. He didn’t mind, though, since he thought people who didn’t care about their future were a lot more geeky than him. And of course he was right! When the other students called him “Computerkid” and laughed at him, he felt flattered and took it as a compliment. That was what he wanted to be - a computer kid, and later on, a computer man. A man who built computers who were more powerful than anyone could even imagine. Already, an idea had started to grow in Bill’s head. But for the moment, he put it aside. He knew he’d use it one day, but that day was not there quite yet.
In 1973, Bill entered Harvard University as a freshman. Here, he met a person who was to become very important for his dawning career: Paul Allen. Paul and Bill immediately became really close friends; they shared the same visions, the same dreams, the same strong determination. Two years later, the two 19-yearolds made a decision that shocked everyone. Their parents, friends and teachers could hardly believe it when Paul and Bill told them the news: they were going to drop out of Harvard, and devote all their energies to a company they were planning to start together. They called the company Microsoft, and Microsoft’s mission was both simple and obvious: “A personal computer on ever desktop and in every home”. Bill Gates and Paul Allen began developing software for personal computers. Today - years of hard work later - all we have to do is look around to realize their mission is accomplished. As a bonus, Bill has become the richest man on the planet, with an estimated fortune of...