It is impossible to write about the history of Microsoft without mentioning the name of Bill Gates, the founder and leader of Microsoft Corporation. Bill Gates was born William Henry Gates III on October 28, 1955. Raised in Seattle, Washington, in a family with a rich history in business, politics, and community service, he led a comfortable upper middle class life. In elementary school, Bill Gates excelled, especially in the subjects of math and science. In 1968, his parents enrolled him in The Lakeside Prep School, where the atmosphere was intellectual enough to stimulate him.

Attending Lakeside was a pivotal to his future because it was there that he discovered computers. At that time, computers were too large and expensive for the school to purchase one of its own so the school had a fundraiser and bought computer time from various corporations. Bill Gates, his friend Paul Allen and a few other students quickly took to computing

. In fact, they began to skip classes, turning in their homework late, and using up all of the school’s computer time rather quickly. Since one of the chief programmers of Computer Center Corporation had a child enrolled in the school, a deal was made to provide computer time to Lakeside’s students.

In 1986, the company went public, and Gates became a 31-year old billionaire. The next year, the first version of Windows was introduced, and by 1993, a million copies per month were being sold. Windows introduced the graphical user interface (GUI), a popular feature of the Apple Macintosh computer, to the PC world. With its icons and pull-down menus, it gave users an easy to understand environment and was immediately popular. This gave Microsoft a huge opportunity to write and sell a completely new line of applications designed for Windows. In time, Microsoft’s sales and staff grew with their profits and stock price. Many employees became millionaires and Bill Gates became the world’s richest man.

In the December of 1974, Paul Allen was browsing for magazines and saw a picture of the Altair 8080 computer on the cover of Popular Electronics. Inside was an article about this computer, which was advertised as the world’s first minicomputer kit. The author of the article proclaimed, “The era of the computer in every home-a favorite topic among science fiction writers-has arrived!” (Manes & Andrews, 1993, p.63). They both realized that this could be the beginning of a home computer revolution and that software was going to be needed for these machines. Gates was able to arrange a meeting at Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, the manufacturer of Altair, by telling them that he

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