How a Geek Changed the World William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, an American business philanthropist, of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, to William H. Gates, Sr. (a prominent lawyer) and Mary Maxwell Gates (served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way). Gates attended Lakeside School, Seattle's most exclusive prep school, where he was able to develop his programming skills on the school's minicomputer. Minicomputer In 1973 he went on to study at Harvard University but dropped out without graduating to pursue what would become a lifelong career in software development. While Gates was a student at Harvard, he co-wrote with Paul Allen the original Altair BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 (the first commercially successful personal computer) in the mid 1970s. Paul Allen Altair 8800 In 1975, Gates and Allen co-founded Micro-Soft, later Microsoft Corporation Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, and in August, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2. Windows 1.0, the first version, released in 1985 Windows 3.0, released in 1990 Windows 95, released in 1995 Gates married Melinda French on January 1, They have three children, Jennifer Katharine Gates (born April 26, 1996), Rory John Gates (born May 23, 1999) and Phoebe Adele Gates (born September 14, 2002). He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third. The Gates home is a very modern 21st century house in the "Pacific Lodge" style, with advanced electronic systems everywhere. According to King County public records, as of 2002, the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $113 million, and the annual property tax is just over $1 million. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in ALL LIVES HAVE EQUAL VALUE Gates has authored two books: The Road Ahead (1995) the Speed of Thought (1999) THAT IS ALL ABOUT BILL GATES