Ľudia, ktorí zmenili svet
People who changed the world
William Henry Gates III
alias Bill Gates
Exclusive base for personality development
Bill Gates, full name William Henry Gates III, was born to family of company attorney and teacher and member of the board
of directors for First Interstate Bank. Apart from that his mother,
Mary Maxwell Gates, served on the position of member of national
board for international non-profit organization United Way. So Bill
got an extraordinary good family, financial and moral background
thanks to he became a student of the prestige private high school
in Lakeside in his early age and later also of the well-known Harvard College.
Even during the study at high school his interest in electronic
devices showed itself. In 1970’s the computers were only at the
beginning of their way which not even today sees its end. Young
Bill gained already at that time the job in one of the local computer
companies which enabled him the access to mini-computer PDP10. Work with it became so interesting and valuable for Bill and
soon, in his 17 years, he was able to put together the full program
for school schedule creation. For this program he got a grant of
4200 USD which in that time meant a meaningful amount of money.
In 1973 he enrolled at Harvard College where he met Steve Ballmer, the later CEO of Microsoft. He also brought another
acquaintance from high school, Paul Allen, with who he created
the interpreter of programming language Altair BASIC for the first
commercial successful computer Altair 8800. Already here we can
find the basis of the current Microsoft Corporation.
Gates is filling this need in an uncommon extent. With his wife he
leads Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which size afflicts more than
20 different humanitarian aims. Among them are battle against
diseases in countries of the third world including HIV, pneumonia,
malaria and tuberculosis, help to people without home, development of new drugs, control of tobacco industry and financial help
to poor people.
The foundation was established symbolic on 1st January 2000
to indicate that close before the end of the 20th century very wealthy people should also share their wealth with those who had not
an easy life. The turn of 20th and 21st century became the most
significant for Gates in his life, because his big business was taken
over by other gifted people and he started to fully devote to altruism. However, he has kept an analytical thinking and the effort to
look to the future from now on, therefore his foundation solves
not only the consequences but also the reasons of human misery.
Almost without competitor is the effort of foundation to improve the lifes of people in countries of the third world through
education and health care. The extent of foundation activities is
however much more wider - for all activities we can remind the
huge amount of plant seeds which are kept for future generations
in specialized warehouses.
Micro-Soft
To sell their programming language Gates and Allen had to
found a company. Therefore in 1975 the company Micro-Soft with
the only product - programming language Microsoft BASIC was
established. Success of this work was so big that it determined the
next direction of the company and created a capital for an aggressive expansion. It required the whole Gate’s time therefore he left
the prestige Harvard in third class and started to devote fully to the
company. The most significant turn in history of Microsoft was in
the end of 1970’s when he started to cooperate with gigant IBM.
IBM was at that time preparing for the enter to the world of personal computers and Gates became the supplier of the operating system MS-DOS. Long after, this system was the basis for all personal
computers around the world. Later misunderstandings with IBM
led to creating of own operating system of Microsoft, today’s Windows. Microsoft introduced the operating environment for the first
time under name Windows in 1985 as the addition to operating
system MS-DOS as the effort to answer the increasing popularity
of graphic user interface. In the course of time Windows gained
a dominant position on the world’s market of personal computers
and it brought an enormous wealth to Gates. At present, its share
is about 90% with the decreasing tendency and Bill Gates ranked
among the world’s wealthiest people between 1996 and 2011,
mostly at the first position.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
In course of time Gate’s wealth became the phenomenon and
the jokes about it were circulating. He could use this wealth to
secure his family and to devote to himself for the rest of his life,
instead of that the need for making the world better won. And
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To be good at any price
As by each giant of the history, Bill Gates has become the
target of criticism mainly on the theme of population reduction.
Mainly his acitivities connected to controlled parenthood in poor
countries are reproached to him. Even though, Gates chooses the
way of open discussion and he emphasizes the importance of responsible parenthood. Already the fact, that the world’s philanthropists are not frustrated, has the potential to make the world
even better space for the life.