Feature – You could hardly miss the news this week that Bill Gates is retiring from the company he co-founded. You may love him, you may hate him or you may not care. But it is an undeniable fact Gates has impacted the lives of most of us, pioneering a time in which the PC has changed from being an expensive and mostly useless machine for home users into a commodity. Reason enough to look back in history and highlight the most important milestones of Gates’ career. This first part covers Gates pre-1980 time.

Bill Gates is not an ordinary guy. You don't become the richest person on the planet (currently he is in #3) by pure coincidence. The stars were aligned since his birth and early childhood. A wealthy environment provided top education, which may have contributed to his sharpened thinking and quick mind reflexes.

But he wasn't destined for a career his parents had in mind. His love for the software became evident in his early teenage days and is still apparent today, even now that he is 52. Few believe that his retirement is just a sign that has lost passion for software and technology, but it is simply interpreted as a move to pursue opportunities for his charity and to make room for next-generation of young and upcoming leaders that will bring fresh thoughts into the company.

However, the history of Microsoft and Bill Gates are two inseparable stories, one closely tied to the other. Unfortunately, we have never had the opportunity to interview Gates for TG Daily, but, over the years, we talked to many visionaries in the industry who told us countless stories about their experiences with Gates. Probably most interestingly, our managing editor Wolfgang Gruener, interviewed Intel’s Pat Gelsinger in 2005 who commented on Intel co-founder Andy Grove and Bill Gates in this way:

What about comparing Grove to Gates? "Both men are brilliant," he said. "But everyone in the industry feels that with Bill there is always a Microsoft angle in everything that is going on - you just have to figure out where it is. With Andy, there is this intellectual integrity to look out for the best interests for the industry as well. We drove USB, PCI, and other things that had huge positive effects on the industry. There is almost this irritation about Gates' success despite the industry, while Andy's success is with the industry."

"Both are very aggressive individuals, very bright and strategically very challenging."If you have a conversation with either one of them, you show up with your game face on. You have to be on top of your facts and data, because you realize that intellectually, you start any conversation with a serious deficit."

As Gates is preparing his departure from an industry he shaped over the past three decades, we decided to take a look at key milestones in Bill Gates' life, starting from his early days and up today. This first installment covers the 1950s to 1980s.


A not-so-ordinary family

The story of Bill Gates and his love for the software begins with the birth of William Henry Gates III, as he was fully named, on October 28, 1955. He was born in a wealthy family: His father was a respected lawyer, while his mother served on the board of directors for United Way and the First Interstate BancSystem (her father J.W. Maxwell was a national bank president). Gates also has two sisters. Kristianne and Libby. Although he was the fourth of his name in the family, he got the "III" suffix since his father had dropped his own "III" suffix. His parents decided to enroll him at age thirteen to an exclusive private school called Lakeside School proved, which exposed Gates to computers for the first time.


Love at first sight: Software

Gates gained computer experience by using computer time on a General Electric computer, which was paid for by  Lakeside School’s Mothers Club from proceeds of the school's rummage sale.

Gates reportedly wrote his first computer program in eighth grade, a tic-tac-toe implementation in BASIC that allowed users to play against the machine. He was fascinated by the way machine always executes the code perfectly, commenting "There was just something neat about the machine." He also wrote a program that schedules students in classes, modifying it in such a way that it placed him in classes with mostly female students. He later commented that "it was hard to tear myself away from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success."

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