BILL GATES

Microsoft cofounder and chief executive officer Bill Gates has become the wealthiest man in America and one of the most influential personalities in the ever-evolving computer industry. Love of computer technology William H. Gates III was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. He was the second child and only son of William Henry Gates Jr., a successful Seattle attorney, and Mary Maxwell, a former schoolteacher. Kristi, his older sister, later became his tax accountant and Libby, his younger sister, lives in Seattle raising her two children. Gates enjoyed a normal, active childhood and participated in sports, joined the Cub Scouts, and spent summers with his family in Bremerton, Washington. Although Gates's parents had a law career in mind for their son, he developed an early interest in computer science and began studying computers in the seventh grade at Seattle's Lakeside School. Lakeside was a private school chosen by Gates's parents in the hopes that it would be more challenging for their son's intellectual drive and curiosity. At Lakeside, Gates came to know Paul Allen, a classmate with similar interests in technology who would eventually become his business partner. Immediately, Gates and Allen realized the potential of the young computer industry. Early experience Gates's early experiences with computers included debugging (eliminating errors from) programs for the Computer Center Corporation's PDP-10, helping to computerize electric power grids for the Bonneville Power Administration, and founding with Allen a firm called Traf-O-Data while still in high school. Their small company earned them twenty thousand dollars in fees for analyzing local traffic patterns. While working with the Computer Center's PDP-10, Gates was responsible for what was probably the first computer virus, a program that copies itself into other programs and ruins data. Discovering that the machine was connected to a national network of computers called Cybernet, Gates invaded the network and installed a program on the main computer that sent itself to the rest of the network's computers, making it crash (became damaged). When Gates was found out, he was severely punished, and he kept away from computers for his entire junior year at Lakeside. Without the lure of computers, Gates made plans for college and law school in 1970. But by 1971 he was back helping Allen write a class scheduling program for their school's computer.

The article that started it all Gates entered Harvard University in 1973 and pursued his studies for the next year and a half. His life changed in January of 1975, however, when Popular Mechanics carried a cover story on a $350 microcomputer, the Altair, made by a firm called MITS in New Mexico. When Allen excitedly showed him the story, Gates knew where he wanted to be: at the forefront of computer software (a program of instructions for a computer) design. Gates dropped out of Harvard in 1975, ending his academic life and beginning his career as a software designer. At this time, Gates and Allen cofounded Microsoft. They wrote programs for the early Apple and Commodore machines. One of Gates's most significant opportunities arrived in 1980, when IBM approached him to help with their personal computer project, code name Project Chess. Gates developed the Microsoft Disk Operating System, or MS-DOS. (An operating system is a type of software that controls the way a computer runs.) Not only did he sell IBM on the new operating system, but he also convinced the computer giant to allow others to write software for the machine. The result was the rapid growth of licenses for MS-DOS, as software developers quickly moved to become compatible with (able to work with) IBM. By the early 1990s Microsoft had sold more than one hundred million copies of MS-DOS, making the operating system the all-time leader in software sales. For his achievements in science and technology, Gates received the Howard Vollum Award in 1984 from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Gates's competitive drive and fierce desire to win has made him a powerful force in business, but it has also consumed much of his personal life. In the six years between 1978 and 1984, he took a total of only two weeks vacation. But on New Year's Day 1994 Gates married Melinda French, a Microsoft manager, on the Hawaiian island of Lanai. The ceremony was held on the island's Challenge golf course, and Gates kept it private by buying out the unused rooms at the local hotel and by hiring all of the helicopters in the area to keep photographers from using them. His fortune at the time of his marriage was estimated at close to seven billion dollars. By 1997 his worth was estimated at approximately $37 billion, earning him the title of "richest man in America."

The future for Microsoft Many criticize Gates not just for his success, but because they feel he tries to unfairlyand maybe even illegallydominate the market. As a result of Microsoft's market control, the U.S. Department of Justice brought an antitrust lawsuit (a lawsuit that is the result of a company being accused of using unfair business practices) against the company in 1998, saying the company had an illegal stronghold on the software industry. Gates maintained Microsoft's success over rivals such as Oracle and IBM was simply the result of smart, strategic decision making. U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Jackson did not agree, and in November 1999, he found Microsoft to be a monopoly (a company with exclusive control) that used its market power to harm competing companies. Because of the ruling, Gates faced the prospect of breaking up Microsoft. On January 13, 2000, Gates handed off day-to-day management of Microsoft to friend and righthand man Steve Ballmer, adding chief executive officer to his existing title of president. Gates held on to his position as chairman in the reshuffle, and added the title of chief software architect. In the spring of 2002 Gates himself was scheduled to testify on behalf of Microsoft. The final ruling on the fate of Microsoft has the potential to be a landmark decision on the future of the computer industry.

Gates as philanthropist Aside from being the most famous businessman of the late 1990s, Gates also has distinguished himself as a philanthropist (someone working for charity). He and wife Melinda established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses on helping to improve health care and education for children around the world. The foundation has donated $4 billion since its start in 1996. Recent pledges include $1 billion over twenty years to fund college scholarships for about one thousand minority students; $750 million over five years to help launch the Global Fund for Children's Vaccines; $50 million to help the World Health Organization's efforts to eradicate polio, a crippling disease that usually attacks children; and $3 million to help prevent the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS; an incurable disease that destroys the body's immune system) among young people in South Africa. In November 1998 Gates and his wife also gave the largest single gift to a U.S. public library, when they donated $20 million to the Seattle Public Library. Another of Gates's charitable donations was $20 million given to the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology to build a new home for its Laboratory for Computer Science. In July 2000 the foundation gave John Hopkins University a five-year, $20 million grant to study whether or not inexpensive vitamin and mineral pills can help save lives in poor countries. On November 13, 2000, Harvard University's School of Public Health announced it had received $25 million from the foundation to study AIDS prevention in Nigeria. The grant was the largest single private grant in the school's history. It was announced on February 1, 2001, that the foundation would donate $20 million to speed up the global eradication (to completely erase) of the disease commonly known as elephantiasis, a disease that causes disfigurement. In 2002 Gates, along with rock singer Bono, announced plans for DATA Agenda, a $24 billion fund (partially supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) that seeks to improve health care in Africa. Although many describe Gates as cold and distant, his friends find him friendlier since his marriage and since the birth of his daughter, Jennifer, in April 1996. Further, he recognizes his overall contribution to both the world of technology and his efforts in philanthropy. In Forbes magazine's 2002 list of the two hundred richest people in the world, Gates was number one for the eighth straight year, coming in with a net worth of $52.8 billion.

STEVE JOBS
Bio Steve Jobs is the CEO of Apple Computer, a leader in the field of personal computing which he co-founded in 1976, and Pixar, the Academy-Award-winning animation studio he co-founded in 1986. His innovative idea of what a personal computer should be led him to revolutionize the consumer computer hardware and software industry. When Jobs was twenty one, he and a friend, Steve Wozniak, built a personal computer that they called the Apple. The Apple changed people's idea of what a computer should be. Thanks to the Apple, people's image of computers changed from being a gigantic and inscrutable mass of vacuum tubes only used by big business and the government to a small box used by ordinary people. No company has done more to democratize the computer and make it user-friendly than Apple Computer. Steve Jobs software design for the Macintosh introduced the windows interface and the mouse which set a new standard for graphical interface applications and interface interaction. Jobs was an unlikely candidate to have become the prototype of America's computer industry entrepreneur. While still in high school, Jobs attended lectures at the Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto. He was also hired as a summer employee for Hewlett-Packard. Another employee at

Hewlett-Packard was Stephen Wozniak a recent dropout from the University of California at Berkeley and an engineering whiz with a passion for inventing electronic gadgets. In 1972 Jobs graduated from high school and register at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Going to work for Atari after leaving Reed College, Jobs renewed his friendship with Steve Wozniak. The two designed computer games for Atari and a telephone "blue box", getting much of their impetus from the Homebrew Computer Club. Jobs was not interested in creating electronics and was nowhere near as good an engineer as Wozniak. Although he was not really interested in creating electronics, his business sense for the marketability of these products was the turning point. He asked his engineering friend Wozniak to help him build a personal computer. Jobs sold his Volkswagen micro-bus and Wozniak sold his Hewlett-Packard scientific calculator, which raised $1,300 to start their new company. With that initial capital and credit lines with local electronics suppliers, they set up their first production line. Jobs encouraged Wozniak to quit his job at Hewlett-Packard and become the vice president in charge of research and development of the new enterprise. Beginning work in the Job's family garage they managed to make their first big sale when the Byte Shop in Mountain View bought their first fifty fully assembled computers. On this basis the Apple Corporation was founded. The name is allegedly based on Job's favorite fruit and the logo chosen to play on both the company name and the word byte. Steve Jobs was a true visionary who created the first truly personal computer, the Apple, in his garage. From calculating federal taxes to executing individual business operations, Jobs lead a hardware revolution by reducing the size of computers to small boxes and introducing them to the masses. The development of the Macintosh re-introduced Xerox's innovative idea of a user-friendly interface with a mouse. The Macintosh used a windows interface which contained picture-like icons representing a function or a program to be executed. The user would use the mouse to move a cursor onto the icon and press the mouse button to execute the function or program. The Macintosh interface has since been copied by every operating systems manufacturer in the world and become the standard interface format for both personal computers and super-computers. On September 12, 1985 Steve Jobs stood up in an Apple board meeting and after years of internal political turmoil and power struggles, said in a flay, unemotional voice, "I've been thinking a lot and it's time for me to get on with my life. It's obvious that I've got to do something. I'm thirty years old." Resigning as chairman, Steve said he intended to leave the company and start a new venture to address the higher education market. After leaving Apple, Jobs' new revolutionary ideas were not in hardware but in software of the computer industry. In 1989 Jobs

tried to do it all over again with a new company called Next. He planned to build the next generation of personal computers that would put Apple to shame. It didn't quite happen that way. After eight long years of struggle and after running through $250 million in capital, Next closed down its hardware division in 1993. Jobs realized that he was not going to revolutionize the hardware industry; he had done that once already. He turned his attention to the software side of the computer industry. Jobs envisioned that the NextStep operating system would revolutionize the computer. The core of the NextStep OS was a new technology called object-oriented programming (OOP). OOP lets programmers write complex software programs in a fraction of the usual time. NeXT Software was sold to Apple Computer in February 1997. Steve Jobs is also Chairman and CEO of Pixar, the Academy-Award-winning computer animation studios which he co-founded in 1986. Pixar's first feature film, Toy Story, was released by Walt Disney Pictures in November 1995 and became the highest domestic grossing film released that year and the third highest grossing animated film of all time. As the Chairman and CEO of Apple Computer, he pays himself an annual salary of $1 per year. Steve still lives with his wife and three children near where he grew up in the apricot orchard now known as Silicon Valley.

Timeline 1970s 1974: Video game designer for Atari; worked there several months; used savings to travel to India; returned to California and spent a brief time on a communal farm. 1975: Attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, Calif., attended by friend and engineering genius, Stephen Wozniak; they joined forces and built a marketable tabletop computer in Jobs' parents' garage; co-founded Apple Computer Inc. 1976: Introduced Apple I computer for $666; first single-board computer with onboard Read Only Memory (ROM) that told the machine how to load programs from an external source and had a video interface. 1977: Introduced Apple II; first mass-marketed personal computer; had a plastic case and included color graphics; Jobs encouraged programmers to create applications for the Apple II; this resulted in 16,000 programs from games to farm budgets; former Intel marketing manager Mike Markkula became Apple chairman and secured venture capital of $600,000. 1979: Development of a computer named Lisa, which would redefine personal computing; Jobs removed as project manager; he began working on the Macintosh personal computer.

1980s 1980: Initial public offering of Apple; market value of company rose to $1.2 billion; Apple III introduced with eight applications, including text and graphics; initial problems forced a recall; once fixed, it became popular with professional customers; situation created a management shakeup; Markkula became president, Jobs became chairman. 1981: Stephen Wozniak took leave of absence after being injured in a private plane crash; IBM sold its first personal computer, four years after Apple II; Apple's sales continued to rise 1983: Public debut of Lisa, a powerful, more intuitive computer controlled by hand-held mouse; designed for computer illiterate; smaller, less expensive version called Macintosh also introduced; Jobs recruited former PepsiCo President John Sculley as new Apple president and CEO. 1985: Jobs essentially ousted from Apple in a boardroom coup after a power struggle with Sculley; resigned with $150 million but personally hurt; formed NeXT Software to develop computer hardware and software; Microsoft sold its first Windows 1.0 operating system 1986: Bought Pixar computer animation studios from George Lucas for less than $10 million 1989: NeXT produced a powerful but expensive computer, which was rejected by the arketplace; Pixar won an Academy Award for computer-animated film "Tin Toy" 1990s 1993: Still unprofitable NeXT ended hardware division to focus on software for programmers and building Internet sites; Sculley resigned as CEO of Apple 1995: Walt Disney Pictures released Pixar's first feature film, "Toy Story," first animated feature created entirely on computer; was highest domestic grossing film that year 1996: Jobs contacted Apple; Apple acquired NeXT; Jobs returned as non-salaried adviser to chairman Gilbert F. Amelio 1997: Apple's revenues dropped significantly; Jobs negotiated deal with longtime competitor Bill Gates of Microsoft; Apple made deal to include Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser on Macintosh operating system; Microsoft agreed to invest $150 million of non-voting Apple stock and to develop Mac versions of popular Microsoft Office software; Amelio ousted by Apple board; Jobs offered CEO and chairman position, and he agreed to serve on an interim basis 1998: Apple Computer rebounded with three profitable quarters in a row