The Genius of Microsoft: How Bill Gates and Windows Changed the World
TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 THE BEGINNING CHAPTER 2 STANDOUT PRODUCTS CHAPTER 3 IN THE NEWS CHAPTER 4 A LOOK AHEAD Timeline Glossary Learn More Index 4 6 14 18 22 28 30 31 32
INTRODUCTION Bill Gates computer skills helped make him one of the wealthiest people on Earth Bill Gates was confident The teen from Seattle Washington was still in high school but his skills were in demand He had mastered several computer languages including BASIC and COBOL He knew how to program computers At that time in the early 1970s very few people had that ability 4
Bill had already put his skills to the test several times Along with friends in the Lakeside School computer club he had tested a mainframe computer for a team of engineers from the University of Washington The engineers wanted the Lakeside club to find bugs in their code and gave the students free computing time in exchange for their work After successfully completing that project Lakeside hired Bill to computerize the school’s class scheduling system Next Bill and fellow computer club member Paul Allen formed a company called Traf-O-Data They designed a computer system for analyzing traffic patterns for city governments Bill believed that his computer skills would make him rich He imagined running a big computer company But the high schooler had no idea just how big his business would become A young Gates right and Paul Allen at Lakeside School in 1970 5
