William H. Gates III

Bill Gates is in the bottom left corner (http://www.fiveanddime.net/images/bill-gates-1978.jpg)

William (Bill) Gates was born on October 28 1955 in Seattle, Washington. He was the third person of his family to be named William Henry Gates but later on in his life he changed it to Bill Henry Gates. He is the founder of the well known corporation, Microsoft which was the maker of the also very successful XBOX and the sequel XBOX 360. He is my hero because he has started an enterprise, he’s donated mass amounts of his fortune to charities and he’s bettered our lives with Microsoft Windows computers.

Picture of Gates wile attending Harvard (http://www.geckoandfly.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/bill_gates_harvard_drop_out.jpg)

His journey from a kid to a founder of a multi-billion corporation began when he was attending elementary school and Lakeside Private School. At age 13 he started to program computers. In 1973 he attended Harvard University, and invented a programming Language called BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). He left Harvard to devote his life to Microsoft. Gates and Paul Allen, a child hood friend, Microsoft had started in 1975. As of now there is roughly 7.1 billion dollars invested in Microsoft. Because of Microsoft Bill has 58 billion dollars. Bill Gates fortune had begun from a simple interest of software and ended as a multi-billion corporation.

Bill Gates had made billions because of Microsoft’s success and had been the richest man since 2004-2007. However he had donated mass amounts of money and had even sold some of his stock to build the William H. Gates Foundation in 1994. Bill’s wife had combined 3 family foundations to form the Bill & Melinda Foundation in 2000, which has become the biggest transparently operated charitable foundations in the world. The foundation has provided 7 billion dollars to different causes and in 2004 Forbes magazine had announced Bill had donated 29 billion dollars since 2000. Although this has knocked him from being the richest man in the world in 2007 the money has helped many charities which are very thankful.

Bill Gates Introducing Windows XP (http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=103171&rendTypeId=4)

Although Bill has done some wonderful things such as donate a lot of money we can’t forget about the software he and his corporation has given us. We wouldn’t even have the computers to type our work and make it look neat. Bill Gates has helped many with his software and has connected us with each other with the internet. He has also entertained kids with the computers by allowing games to be played and his game consoles, such as XBOX and XBOX 360.

Bill Gates is my hero because first he had begun a small business in hopes of helping the world with software. Second although he was the richest man for over 3 years he still never forgot about others and donated roughly 29 billion dollars to charities. Lastly he had improved our lives, schools and businesses with computers. It is hard to picture the world without Bill Gates because not only has he inspired us that we could start something small and end up with a multi-billion corporation, but he has given us the technology that gets us one step closer to it.