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By: Paul Giambarba
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Bill Gates, college drop-out, head of the biggest software company in the world and voted the world's richest man by Forbes for 12th consecutive years. Admired by some, Gates is also loathed by many - check out Bill Gates is Dead and his "Assasination Video".
Bill Gates steered Microsoft to control more than 90% of the client operating system market and be worth more than $300 billion by market capitalization, as of October 2005. Since going public at $21/share on March 13th, 1986, Microsoft stocks has split 9 times and would be worth a staggering $8064 today. If you had invested $10,000 in Microsoft stocks in 1986, your stocks would be worth $3.8 million today ...or up to $7 million before the tech bubble burst in 2000.
His astronomical wealth has also drawn huge fascination, judging from websites like Bill Gates Net Worth Page and How to Become as Rich as Bill Gates - he makes $155,000 an hour based on his net worth today :)
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1955 -
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William Henry Gates III is born on October 28th in Seattle, Washington. Popularly known as Bill Gates, his family called him "Trey" when he was little.
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1967 -
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Bill enrolls in the Lakeside School in Seattle and met Paul Allen.
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1969 -
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Bill and Paul (a.k.a "Lakeside Programming Group") reports bugs in exchange for computer time.
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1972 -
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Bill and Paul forms Traf-O-Data and develops hardware/software to record highway traffic.
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1973 -
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Bill Gates graduats from Lakeside High and enrolls in Harvard University, where he majors in pre-law.
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1974 -
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Bill Gates and Paul Allen forms Micro-soft.
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1975 -
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Bill and Paul writes the first computer language called BASIC and license it to MITS.
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1976 -
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Bill writes software routines for BASIC on the Altair to use diskettes for storage.
Gates writes his famous "Open Letter to Hobbyists", accusing them of software piracy.
Bill Gates drops out of Harvard.
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1977 -
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Bill Gates and Paul Allen officially registers a partnership, and Micro-soft becomes Microsoft.
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1980 -
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Tim Paterson begans writing an OS for use on Seattle Computer Products' (SCP) 8086-based computer.
IBM repesentatives meet Gates and Steve Ballmer to write the OS for their upcoming computer.
They meet again and IBM showed the "Acorn" computer running on an 8-bit 8080 processor.
Gates recommends the use of a 16-bit 8086 processor instead and promises an operating system.
SCP ships QDOS 0.10 (Quick & Dirty Operating System).
Paul Allen approachs SCP and purchased the rights to resell to an unnamed client for $50,000 - IBM.
Microsoft propose to be in-charged of IBM's entire software development and convert DOS for IBM's PC.
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1981 -
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Microsoft buys all the rights to SCP's DOS and renames it MS-DOS.
IBM introduces its first desktop, Datamaster, which runs on the 16-bit 8086 CPU and Microsoft's MS-DOS.
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1983 -
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Microsoft announces Windows 1.0.
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1985 -
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Bill Gates gives keynote speech at Comdex.
Microsoft releases Windows 1.0.
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1986 -
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Microsoft is taken public at an IPO price of $21/share.
Bill Gates became a billionaire at 31 years old - the yougest person to do so.
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1990 -
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Microsoft releases Windows 3.0 and Microsoft's sales top $1 billion for the first time.
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1994 -
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Bill Gates and Melinda French gets married in Hawaii on January 1st. Bill Gates becomes the richest person in America later in the year.
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1995 -
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Microsoft releases Windows 95 and Bill Gates becomes the richest person in the world.
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1996 -
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Jennifer Katherine Gates is born on April 26th.
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1998 -
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Bill, Melinda and Jennifer move into their new multi-million dollar house in Medina, Washington.
Microsoft releases Windows 98.
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1999 -
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Bill's fortunes swell to $90 billion and maintains his position on Forbes list as the wealthiest person alive.
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2000 -
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Microsoft releases Windows 2000 and Windows ME.
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2001 -
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Microsoft releases Windows XP.
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2002 -
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Stocks and lawsuits bring Gates' net worth down to $53 billion - still good enough for #1 on Forbes list.
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2003 -
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Microsoft releases Windows Server 2003.
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2004 -
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Microsoft announces a new OS, codenamed Longhorn.
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2005 -
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Longhorn is officially named Windows Vista.
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2006 -
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After numerous delays, Windows Vista is finally released to business users. Microsoft also RTMs Office 2007.
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2007 -
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Bill Gates officiates the public release of Windows Vista in New York's Times Square at midnight on January 30th.
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