Brief Biography of Bill Gates and Fun Life Facts

Bill Gates – one of the wealthiest people on the planet, the IT genius, whose products were used by almost every representative of the population of the globe (or products, which were created by a company, which was founded by him and managed for many years). But these are the facts from Bill’s biography, which are well known to the general public, so we wanted to help you expand your knowledge about this incredible person.


To start off, please take a look at this interactive video presentation:


Bill Gates: 7 True Facts about Genius Achievements at Microsoft

#1. The history of Bill’s first company

Bill Gates, being just 17 years old, decided to create a company, alongside Paul Allen and Paul Gilbert. Young inventors were developing and selling special counters that were used for analyzing road traffic density. Even though the company, which was called Traf-O-Data, didn’t manage to become a big success, the young entrepreneurs gained valuable experience that came in handy, when they took on a bigger project – the Microsoft.

#2. Working for a good cause

Apart from being one of the wealthiest people on Earth and an influential IT genius, Bill and his wife Melinda founded and manage the largest charitable foundations in the world. The main objectives of the Gates Foundation are aimed at the support and improvement of healthcare systems worldwide, as well as overcoming the problem of hunger in developing countries.

During the years of work in the foundation, Bill Gates has donated $28 billion. Each year the Gates Foundation spends on their projects more than the World Health Organization.

#3. The last days at Microsoft?

Although in 2008 Bill Gates stepped down as the chairman of Microsoft, it does not mean that he had completely halted his relationship with the company. Gates still remains the biggest shareholder of Microsoft, a member of company’s Board of Directors, as well as a regular participant in the development of the most innovative projects.

While interacting with his online community back in January 2015, Gates said that he was involved in developing some sort of a "personal assistant", which thanks to its artificial intelligence and can not only remember everything, but also to anticipate future events. Who knows, maybe Bill Gates is yet to develop his best technology.

#4. Lifesaving prototype

Recently, Bill Gates was actively involved in the promotion and the advertising campaign of the OmniProcessor project. The development of this unusual invention was supported by his foundation.
OmniProcessor is an experimental mobile unit that combines an incinerator and a wastewater treatment system.

The prototype proved successful at processing waste into clean water and electricity (a #groundbreaking invention like this is something that many African countries lack).

What made this project more exciting was that one of the richest men on Earth didn’t hesitate and tried the drinking water, extracted from human waste.

#5. Da Vinci’s Codex Leicester

Regardless of his modest appearance, the billionaire is a big spender and likes getting one of a king things for himself.

His house is fitted with state-of-the-art electronics and gadgets. Moreover, his personal library has a unique collection of books, including the Codex Leicester (Hammer) manuscript by #Leonardo da Vinci. It is the most expensive manuscript in the world, as it was bought for $5.1 million.

#6. The worst IT predictions

When the Internet was taking its first steps towards total world domination, Bill Gates considered this technology to be hopeless. After some time, he understood that, perhaps, it was one of his biggest commercial mistakes and massive resources were directed for its further development.

Other quick facts about Bill Gates’s life and professional achievements: 

- Bill Gates, whose full name is William Henry Gates III, had many influential people in his family: his great-grandfather was a mayor and a senator and his grandfather - a vice-president of the National Bank.

- Bill Gates used to be shy and introvert as a child. He would read books about significant people, from Napoleon to Franklin D. Roosevelt, in order to to understand their way of thinking.

- Young Bill and his friends began programming their first computer games, when they were in high school. After reading the biography of Napoleon, he created a game called the "Risk". Its main objective was to achieve world domination.

- Bill Gates is officially recognized as the most successful Harvard dropout. But, unlike other students, who decided to terminate their education, many years later Bill went back to school and received his honorary degree.

- Today the co-founder of Microsoft is ridiculously rich. Accounting to a very pessimistic analysis, Bill Gates earns about $250 per second or 20 million dollars a day, or $ 7.2 billion a year. If under certain circumstances Bill stopped received profit from his work, and decided to spend a million dollars every day, he would go bankrupt only after 218 years of such ridiculous daily spending.

- On Bill Gates’s fiftieth birthday, the price for Microsoft shares hit all time high, letting his fortune briefly exceed $120 billion.

- During his lifetime Gates managed to make an unbelievable fortune but one can’t say that he just got lucky. Bill is an incredible workaholic. In 1993, even when Microsoft starting to bring impressive profits, William Henry Gates III continued to work for 13 hours, 6 days a week.

- There was a movie made about the rivalry of Bill Gates and #Steve Jobs. It is called Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999).

- There are many books written about Bill Gates: a quick search at Amazon.com yields at least 337 search results.

- "The Road Ahead", a book, where Bill Gates wrote his understanding of the future of the world under the influence of modern computers and IT services, was named world’s top best-selling book seven weeks in a row.


Image credits:

1) www.cdn2.geckoandfly.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/bill-gates-quotes.jpg