Dnes je piatok, 27. decembra 2024. Meniny má Filoména
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Životopis Billa Gatesa a história Microsoftu. Projekt na Angličtinu C. Dlho som si lámal hlavu nad témou, potom ma napadlo jednoduché riešenie. (Ale k jeho fanúšikom nepatrím! :)
06/2000
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Bill Gates and Microsoft
William Henry Gates III was born on 28th of October in 1955 as the second form three children. He was born into a wealthy family in Seattle, in Washington State. His father was a lawyer a his mother was a schoolteacher.
Much of his early childhood was characterized as rebellious. Perhaps this was due to the rivality with his older sister. His parents rewarded him and his sister with 25 cents per each A they earned. However, young Bill continued to get average grades until the eighth grade. At that point, he decided that he wanted to get good grades and then decided to focus his energy into doing just that. He continued to get a straight A average throughout his schooling. In addition to getting good grades, Bill and his sister were encouraged to read a lot by their parents. He was not permitted to watch television on weeknights during his schooling.
Gates attended public elementary school. But due to his high intelligence the school was not good enough for him, so he started attending the Lakeside School, a valued private school, at the age of 11. There, he began his career in personal computer software, he started programming computers. At the age of 13 Bill wrote his first software program: Tic-Tac-Toe. He and several other students could play the game Tic-Tac-Toe against the computer. The game ran very slow. There was no monitor, only a keyboard and a printing machine. Each time they made a move, they had to type it at the keyboard and then go to the printer to see the results. Bill was fascinated with the machine. It fascinated him that he could give the machine instructions and it preformed them perfectly every time.
Unfortunately the students computer grant ran out and students had to pay for the time which they spent using the computer interface. Access to the computer cost $40 per hour. Bill's parents couldn't pay so much, so their son found a way to buy access time. Bill and his good friend Paul Allen worked during summer for computer companies as programmers. They ran software, which the company created. and looked for bugs and fixed them. This turned out to be very lucrative for the young students, they earned $5000 in cash and computer access time.
Gates also wrote a computer program for his school. One of the early programs he wrote was for Lakeside School. It scheduled students in classes. He added some secret instructions to the program, and it scheduled him as the only guy in a class full of girls.
In the year 1972 the company Intel released the first microprocessor called the 8008. It was small, but extremely powerful. Bill and Paul wonted to write a BASIC (Beginners All-purpoSe Instructional Code) program for the little chip. But the chip wasn't able to handle that many complex instructions. Discouraged they continued on with their education. Bill attended Harvard and began studying economics. However his interest in computer software was still high.
In 1974, Intel released an improved version of the 8008 microprocessor, the 8080 chip. This processor had 10 times the power of the original. Bill and Paul discovered that it was capable of be programmed using BASIC. Soon they were sending out letters to various computer companies offering to write programs for the new chip but without success. The first minicomputer, that came on the market, the Altair 8800 contained the Intel's 8080 microprocessor. Bill and Paul realized that if this computer hit the market, their dreams of creating software could com true. So they decided to go ahead and write a program for the computer based on its manual. After 5 long weeks they created the operating system for this computer. They succeeded, Bill left Harvard and Paul quit his programming job at Honeywell.
In 1975 Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded the Microsoft. The company was first based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, near of the manufacturer of the Altair Computer. There, they created software for the Altair in exchange for royalty. By 1977, many companies entered the Personal Computer market including Apple, Commodore and Radio Shack. Bill went to each of the companies and would tried to sell a software license. Microsoft would receive a small royalty for each computer sold that used their software. Many companies didn't want this, but Bill was able to convince them that this was cheaper for them compared to how much it would cost for them to develop their own software.
In the year of 1980 the company IBM (International Business Machines) asked Microsoft to develop for a new personal computer that they will produce. So Microsoft took the job and created Microsoft Disk Operating System, the MS-DOS. In comparison with the other operating systems, MS-DOS was the least expensive and soon the most widely used operating system for Personal Computers. Because IBM created its PC out of relatively common hardware and bought its microprocessors from Intel, it was easy for other computer companies to make clones of it. This proved to be extremely beneficial to Microsoft, because more and more computer companies came to Microsoft, asking the company to develop the software for their computers. IBM and MS-DOS became very widespread in the computer industry.
In 1984 Apple released its Macintosh computer. Microsoft helped to develop the software for the computer. What made this computer so extraordinary was that it had a graphical user interface (GUI). Instead typing the commands using a keyboard and function keys, this system uses screens that contain menus which contain the various operations which the computer could perform. With the use of a rolling clicking device called a mouse, users could move a cursor to select what they wanted their computer to do. Apple soon became very popular, because it simplified the running of software, so someone did not have to be speed typist or programmer to use it.
Microsoft was concentrated on the software market, producing consumer applications like Microsoft Word. In 1986, when the company went public, Gates became a billionaire at the age of thirtyone.
With the popularity of Macintosh, Microsoft began to develop its own visual interface, named Microsoft Windows. It appeared very similar to the operating system used by Macintosh, except that it was a DOS application, so that older programs could be run as well as new software produced for Windows. Windows became fashionable in the early 1990's and soon gained much of the market that IBM lost to Macintosh. In the early 1990's Microsoft continued developing Windows, new improved versions came on the market. By 1993 Microsoft was selling a million copies a month.
In the mid 1990's the Internet was beginning to grow very fast. Microsoft realized that in order to ensure themselves a place in this market they needed to completely rebuild Windows.
Gates dramatically changed the direction of the entire company and focused in on the Internet. When Windows 95 was introduced in August 1995, 7 million copies were sold in the first six weeks alone. This new version of Windows provided better access to the Internet and the possibility of creating local computer networks. It also made upgrading the hardware in computers more simple (so called "plug-and-play").
95% of all personal computers on the World is powered by the operating system from Microsoft. Microsoft employees more then 35000 people worldwide.
Microsoft's software became so widespread that the U.S. Justice Department began a series of antitrust investigations against the company. In June 2000, the judge Thomas Penfield Jackson decided, that it is necessary to split the biggest software company on the World - Microsoft - into two pieces. The one will be concentrated on operating systems (Windows) and the other will produce software applications like text processors (Word), spreadsheets (Excel) and database programs (Access).
Bill Gates is the richest private individual in the World. His wealth is over 80 billion dollars. For many years is he on the top of the Forbes list of The World's Richest People.
In 1994 he married Melinda French, who was a Product Manager at Microsoft. He has two children. Jennifer Katherine, born in 1996 and a son Rory John, born in 1999.
Bill founded The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which promotes increased access to innovative technology in education and global health, and promoting community projects in the Pacific Northwest.
He spent $6 billion in August 1999 to speed the development and reduce the costs of vaccines for malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS.
