Henry Ford

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 - April 7, 1947) was the founder of the Ford Motor Company and one of the first to apply assembly line manufacturing to the mass production of affordable automobiles. This achievement not only revolutionized industrial production, it had such tremendous influence over modern culture that many social theorists identify this phase of economic and social history as "Fordism."

Background

Ford was born on a prosperous farm in Dearborn, Michigan owned by his parents, William and Mary Ford, immigrants from County Cork, Ireland. He was the eldest of six children. As a child, Henry was passionate about mechanics. At 12, he spent a lot of time in a machine shop, which he had equipped himself. By 15, he had built his first internal combustion engine.

In 1879 he left home for the nearby city of Detroit to work as an apprentice machinist, first with James F. Flower & Bros., and later with the Detroit Dry Dock Co. After completion of his apprenticeship, Ford got a job with the Westinghouse company working on gasoline engines. Upon his marriage to Clara Bryant in 1888 Ford supported himself by running a sawmill.

In 1891 Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company, and after his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893 he had enough time and money to devote attention to his personal experiments on internal combustion engines. These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of his own self-propelled vehicle named the Quadricycle, which he test-drove on June 4th that year (this was also the first automobile he ever drove).

After this initial success, Ford left Edison Illuminating and, with other investors, formed the Detroit Automobile Company. The Detroit Automobile Company, however, went bankrupt soon afterward because Ford continued to improve the design instead of selling cars. Ford raced his vehicles against those of other manufacturers to show the superiority of his designs. With the interest in his race cars, he formed a second company, the Henry Ford Company. During this period, he personally drove his Quadricycle to victory in a race against Alexander Winton, a well-known driver and the heavy favorite on October 10, 1901. Ford was forced out of the company by the investors, including Henry M. Leland in 1902, and the company was reorganized as Cadillac.

Ford Motor Company

Henry Ford, with eleven other investors and $28,000 in capital, incorporated the Ford Motor Company in 1903. In a newly-designed car, Ford drove an exhibition in which the car covered the distance of a mile on the ice of Lake St. Clair in 39.4 seconds, which was a new land speed record. Convinced by this success, the famous race driver Barney Oldfield, who named this new Ford model "999" in honor of a racing locomotive of the day, took the car around the country and thereby made the Ford marque well-known throughout the U.S. Henry Ford was also one of the early backers of the Indianapolis 500.

The Model T

In 1908, the Ford company released the Model T. From 1909 to 1913, Ford entered stripped-down Model Ts into races as well, finishing first (although later disqualified) in an "ocean-to-ocean" (across the USA) race in 1909, and setting a one-mile oval speed record at Detroit Fairgrounds in 1911 with driver Frank Kulick. In 1913, Ford attempted to enter a reworked Model T in the Indianapolis 500, but was told rules required the addition of another 1,000 pounds (450 kg) to the car before it could qualify. Ford dropped out of the race, and soon thereafter dropped out of racing permanently, citing dissatisfaction with the sport's rules and the demand on his time by the now booming production of the Model T.

Racing was, by 1913, no longer necessary from a publicity standpoint—the Model T was famous, and ubiquitous on American roads. It was in this year Henry Ford introduced the moving assembly belts into his plants, which enabled an enormous increase in production. By 1918 half of all cars in America were Model Ts. The design, fervently promoted and defended by Henry Ford, would continue through 1927 (well after its popularity had faded), with a final total production of fifteen million vehicles. This was a record which would stand for the next 45 years. Ford said "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black."

Ford's Manufacturing Philosophy

Henry Ford had very specific thoughts on relations with his employees. They were expected to work an eight-hour day, and in 1913 were paid a handsome $5 per day. The pay rate increased to $6 per day at the peak of Model T production in 1918; such a sum for laborers was, at the time, almost unheard-of. Ford also offered his employees an innovative profit-sharing plan.

Conversely, Ford was adamantly against labor unions in his plants. To forestall union activity, he hired Harry Bennett, titularly the head of the Service Department, who employed various intimidation tactics to squash union organizing. The most famous incident, in 1937, was a bloody brawl between company security men and organizers that became known as The Battle of the Overpass. A sit-down strike by the United Auto Workers union in 1941 finally admitted collective bargaining at some Ford plants, but it was not until Henry Ford and Harry Bennett left the company for good in 1945 that it would fully unionize.

On January 1, 1919, Henry Ford turned the presidency of Ford Motor Company over to his son Edsel, although still maintaining a firm hand in its management—few company decisions under Edsel's presidency were made without being approved by Henry, and those few that were, Henry often reversed. Also at this time, Henry and Edsel purchased all remaining stock from other investors, thus becoming sole owners of the company. This began a period of decline for Ford Motor Company, since the stock buyout caused them to borrow heavily just before the postwar recession hit the country.

In about 1920, Ford purchased a vast tract of land in Brazil, Fordlândia to grow rubber for his car tires. It proved a financial disaster and by the time he sold it in 1945, he had lost a fortune.

By the mid 1920's, sales of the Model T began to decline, in part because of the rise of consumer credit. Other auto makers offered payment plans through which consumers could buy their cars, which usually included more modern mechanical features and styling not available with the Model T. Despite urgings from his son Edsel, the company president, Henry Ford steadfastly refused to incorporate new features into the Model T or to form a customer credit plan (the former to keep prices low and affordable, the latter because he believed such plans were bad for the economy).

The Model A and later

By 1926, flagging sales of the Model T convinced Henry Ford of what Edsel had been suggesting for some time: a new model was necessary. The elder Ford pursued the project with a great deal of technical expertise in design of the engine, chassis and other mechanical necessities, while leaving it to his son to develop the body design. Edsel also managed to prevail over his father's initial objections in the inclusion of a sliding-shift transmission. The result was the highly successful Ford Model A, introduced December, 1927 and produced through 1931, with a total output of over four million automobiles. Subsequently the company adopted an annual model change system similar to that in use by automakers today.

During the thirties, Ford also overcame his objection to finance companies, and the Ford-owned Universal Credit Company became a major car financing operation.

Henry Ford long had an interest in plastics developed from agricultural products, especially soybeans. Soybean-based plastics were used in Ford automobiles throughout the 1930s in plastic parts such as car horns, in paint, etc. This project culminated in 1942, when on January 13 Ford patented an automobile made almost entirely of plastic, attached to a tubular welded frame. It weighed 30% less than a standard car of the same size, and was said to be able to withstand blows ten times greater than could steel. Futhermore, it ran on grain alchohol (ethanol Alcohol fuel) instead of gasoline. The design never caught on.

On May 26, 1943, Edsel Ford died, leaving a vacancy in the company presidency. Henry Ford advocated the spot be taken by Harry Bennett. Edsel's widow Eleanor, who had inherited Edsel's voting stock, wanted her son Henry Ford II to take over the position. The issue was settled for a period when Henry himself, at the age of 79, took over the presidency personally. The company saw hard times during the next two years, losing $10 million a month. President Roosevelt considered a federal bailout for Ford Motor Company so that wartime production could continue.

The Dearborn Independent

Henry Ford devoted much of his semi-retirement from Ford Motor to the publication of a newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, which he purchased in 1919. The paper ran for around eight years, during which it introduced to the United States a work (not written by Ford himself) called "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," which has since been discredited by virtually all historians as a forgery. The American Jewish Historical Society describes his ideas during this period as "anti-immigrant, anti-labor, anti-liquor and anti-Semitic".

Ford also published, in his name, several anti-Jewish articles for the Independent which were released in the early 1920s as a set of four bound volumes, cumulatively titled "The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem." Denounced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the articles nevertheless explicitly condemned pogroms and violence against Jews (Volume 4, Chapter 80), preferring rather to blame incidents of mass violence on the Jews themselves. These articles were written by several authors, including Ford's personal secretary of 34 years, Ernest Liebold. None were actually penned by Ford, though since he was the paper's publisher they required his tacit approval.

Ford closed the Dearborn Independent in December 1927 and later retracted the International Jew and the Protocols. On January 7, 1942, Henry Ford wrote a public letter to the ADL denouncing hatred against the Jews and expressing his hope that anti-Jewish hatred would cease for all time. Some claim that Ford neither wrote or signed this letter and have called the sincerity of his apology into question. His writings continue to be used as propaganda by various groups, often appearing on anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi websites.

Henry Ford and Nazism

There is some evidence that Henry Ford gave Adolf Hitler financial backing when Hitler was first starting out in politics. This can in part be traced to statements from Kurt Ludecke, Germany's representative to the U.S. in the 1920s, and Winifred Wagner, daughter-in-law of Richard Wagner, who said they requested funds from Ford to aid the National Socialist movement in Germany. However, a 1933 Congressional investigation into the matter was unable to substantiate one way or the other that funding was actually sent.

Ford Motor Company was active in Germany's military buildup prior to World War II. In 1938, for instance, it opened an assembly plant in Berlin whose purpose was to supply trucks to the Wehrmacht. In July of that year, Ford was awarded (and accepted) the Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle (Großkreuz des Deutschen Adlerordens). Ford was the first American and the fourth person given this award, at the time Nazi Germany's highest honorary award given to foreigners. Earlier the same year, Benito Mussolini had been decorated with the Grand Cross. The decoration was given "in recognition of [Ford's] pioneering in making motor cars available for the masses." The award was accompanied by a personal congratulatory message from Adolf Hitler. [Detroit News, July 31, 1938.]

The Ford Foundation

Henry Ford, with his son Edsel, founded the Ford Foundation in 1936 as a local philanthropy in the state of Michigan with a broad charter to promote human welfare. The Foundation has grown immensely and by 1950 had become national and international in scope.

The foundation no longer has any association with the Ford Motor Company, nor with the family or descendants of Henry Ford.

The final days

At the end of the war, the elder Henry, in ill health, ceded the presidency to his grandson Henry Ford II on September 21, 1945 and went into retirement. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 83 at Fair Lane, his estate in Dearborn, and is buried at the Ford Cemetery in Detroit.

Quotations

"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today." - 1916

"The international financiers are behind all war. They are what is called the International Jew -- German Jews, French Jews, English Jews, American Jews. I believe that in all these countries except our own the Jewish financier is supreme... Here, the Jew is a threat." - 1920

Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III, KBE, (born October 28, 1955), commonly known as Bill Gates, is the co-founder and current Chairman and Chief Software Architect of Microsoft. According to Forbes magazine in 2004, Gates is the wealthiest person in the world, a position he has held steadily for many years.

Biography

Bill Gates was born in Seattle, Washington to William H. Gates, Sr., a corporate lawyer, and Mary Maxwell Gates, board member of First Interstate Bank, Pacific Northwest Bell and the national board of United Way.

Gates attended Lakeside School, Seattle's most exclusive prep school, where he was able to develop his programming skills on the school's minicomputer. He later on went to study at Harvard University, but dropped out without graduating to pursue what would become a lifelong career in software development.

While he was a student at Harvard, he co-authored with Paul Allen the original Altair BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 (the first commercially successful personal computer) in the mid 1970s. It was inspired by BASIC, an easy-to-learn programming language developed at Dartmouth College for teaching purposes.

Gates married Melinda French on January 1, 1994. They have three children, Jennifer Katharine Gates (1996), Rory John Gates (1999) and Phoebe Adele Gates (2002). They live in a very large earth-sheltered home in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington. It is a very modern 21st century house in the "Pacific lodge" style, with advanced electrical and electronic systems everywhere. In one respect though it is more like an 18th or 19th century mansion: It has a large private library with a domed reading room.

Also in 1994, he acquired the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci; as of 2003 it was on display at the Seattle Art Museum.

In 1997, Gates was the victim of a bizarre extortion plot by Chicago resident Adam Quinn Pletcher. Gates testified at the subsequent trial. Pletcher was convicted and sentenced in July 1998 to six years in prison.

Microsoft Corporation

In 1975, Gates and Allen co-founded Microsoft Corporation to market their version of BASIC, called Microsoft BASIC. It was the primary interpreted computer language of the MS-DOS operating system, and was key to Microsoft's early commercial success.

In February 1976, Gates wrote the Open Letter to Hobbyists, which shocked the computer hobbyist community by asserting that a commercial market existed for computer software. Gates stated in the letter that software should not be copied without the publisher's permission, which he equated to piracy. While legally correct, Gates's proposal was unprecedented in a community that was influenced by its ham radio legacy and hacker ethic, in which innovations and knowledge were freely shared in the community. Nevertheless, Gates was right about the market prospects and his efforts paid off: Microsoft Corporation became one of the world's most successful commercial enterprises, and a key player in the creation of a retail software industry.

Microsoft's key moment came when in the late 1970s, IBM was planning to enter the personal computer market with its IBM Personal Computer (PC), which was released in 1981. Gates licensed MS-DOS to IBM, which it had acquired from a local computer manufacturer. The story of how Microsoft acquired the original system (QDOS) has inspired much folklore, which often portrays Gates pouncing on a trivial mistake by Digital Research and stealing that company's lead in microcomputer operating systems. It is frequently cited by those who accuse Gates of unethical business practices. In reality, IBM did approach Digital Research for a version of CP/M for its upcoming IBM PC, and spoke to Gary Kildall's wife Dorothy. IBM representatives wanted Dorothy to sign their standard non-disclosure agreement, which Dorothy considered overly burdensome. IBM then returned to talk to Microsoft. He obtained rights to a cloned design of CP/M, QDOS, from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer products, licensed it to IBM, and MSDOS/IBMDOS was born. Later, IBM discovered that Gates' operating system could have infringement problems with CP/M, contacted Kildall, and in exchange for a promise not to sue, made an agreement that CP/M would be sold along with IBMDOS when the IBM PC was released. The price set by IBM for CP/M was $250 and for MSDOS/IBMDOS it was $40. Obviously, MSDOS/IBMDOS outsold CP/M many times over, eventually becoming the standard. By marketing MS-DOS aggressively to manufacturers of IBM-PC clones, Microsoft gained unprecedented visibility in the microcomputer industry, even rivalling IBM.

During the following years, Gates used his company's growing resources to displace competitors such as WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3, among many others. It is alleged (although never explained in detail) that Gates instructed Microsoft programmers to include special code in one of the MS-DOS versions to make Lotus 1-2-3 produce errors, making it appear to the users as if Lotus's software was the problem.

In the mid-1980s Gates became excited about the possibilities of compact disc for storage, and sponsored the publication of the book CD-ROM: The New Papyrus that promoted the idea of CD-ROM.

In the late 1980s, Microsoft and IBM partnered in the development of a more advanced operating system, OS/2. The operating system was marketed in connection with a new hardware design, the PS/2, that was proprietary and secret to IBM. As the project progressed, Gates oversaw continuing friction with IBM over the system's design, hardware support, and user interface. Ultimately he came to believe that IBM wanted to marginalize Microsoft from having any input in OS/2's development. On May 16, 1991 Gates announced to Microsoft employees that the OS/2 partnership was over and Microsoft would henceforth focus its platform efforts on Windows and the NT kernel. In the ensuing years OS/2 fell to the side and Windows became the favored PC platform.

Some years later, Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser displaced Netscape's Navigator, in a turn of events that many attributed to Microsoft's inclusion of Internet Explorer in Windows at no extra charge. An opposing view is that the inclusion in Windows was less important in Internet Explorer's adoption than Microsoft's improvement of the browser's features to a level comparable with Navigator.

As the architect of Microsoft's product strategy, Gates has aggressively broadened the company's range of products and, once it has obtained a leading position in a category, has vigorously defended that position. His and other Microsoft executives' strategic decisions have more than once drawn the concern of competition regulators, and in some cases have been ruled illegal.

In 2000, Gates promoted long-time friend and Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer to the role of Chief Executive Officer and took on the role of "Chief Software Architect".

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

With his wife, Gates founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charitable organization. Critics have called this a response to negative public outcry over the seemingly monopolistic and anti-competitive practices of his company, but those close to Gates say that he had long expressed his plan to eventually give away most (in 1997 the Washington Post reported 90%) of his large fortune. The foundation's grants have provided funds for underrepresented minority college scholarships, AIDS prevention, diseases that strike mainly in the third world, and other causes. In June 1999, Gates and his wife donated US$5 billion to their foundation, the largest single donation ever by living individuals. He has donated more than 100 million dollars to help kids with AIDS.

Accolades

Honorary KBE from the United Kingdom announced, 2004
Top 100 influential people in media, the Guardian, 2001
The Sunday Times power list, 1999
Upside Elite 100, Ranked 2nd, 1999
Top 50 Cyber Elite, TIME magazine, Ranked 1st, 1998
Top 100 most powerful people in sports, The Sporting News, Ranked 28th, 1997
CEO of the year, Chief Executive Officers magazine, 1994Entomologists have named the Bill Gates flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honour.

Estimated wealth

According to Forbes list of the World's Wealthiest People (figures in US Dollars):
1996 - $18.5 billion, ranked #1
1997 - $36.4 billion, ranked #2
1998 - $51.0 billion, ranked #1
1999 - $90.0 billion, ranked #1
2000 - $60.0 billion, ranked #1
2001 - $58.7 billion, ranked #1
2002 - $52.8 billion, ranked #1
2003 - $40.7 billion, ranked #1
2004 - $46.6 billion, ranked #1Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III, KBE, (born October 28, 1955), commonly known as Bill Gates, is the co-founder and current Chairman and Chief Software Architect of Microsoft. According to Forbes magazine in 2004, Gates is the wealthiest person in the world, a position he has held steadily for many years.

Biography

Bill Gates was born in Seattle, Washington to William H. Gates, Sr., a corporate lawyer, and Mary Maxwell Gates, board member of First Interstate Bank, Pacific Northwest Bell and the national board of United Way.

Gates attended Lakeside School, Seattle's most exclusive prep school, where he was able to develop his programming skills on the school's minicomputer. He later on went to study at Harvard University, but dropped out without graduating to pursue what would become a lifelong career in software development.

While he was a student at Harvard, he co-authored with Paul Allen the original Altair BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 (the first commercially successful personal computer) in the mid 1970s. It was inspired by BASIC, an easy-to-learn programming language developed at Dartmouth College for teaching purposes.

Gates married Melinda French on January 1, 1994. They have three children, Jennifer Katharine Gates (1996), Rory John Gates (1999) and Phoebe Adele Gates (2002). They live in a very large earth-sheltered home in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington. It is a very modern 21st century house in the "Pacific lodge" style, with advanced electrical and electronic systems everywhere. In one respect though it is more like an 18th or 19th century mansion: It has a large private library with a domed reading room.

Also in 1994, he acquired the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci; as of 2003 it was on display at the Seattle Art Museum.

In 1997, Gates was the victim of a bizarre extortion plot by Chicago resident Adam Quinn Pletcher. Gates testified at the subsequent trial. Pletcher was convicted and sentenced in July 1998 to six years in prison.

Microsoft Corporation

In 1975, Gates and Allen co-founded Microsoft Corporation to market their version of BASIC, called Microsoft BASIC. It was the primary interpreted computer language of the MS-DOS operating system, and was key to Microsoft's early commercial success.

In February 1976, Gates wrote the Open Letter to Hobbyists, which shocked the computer hobbyist community by asserting that a commercial market existed for computer software. Gates stated in the letter that software should not be copied without the publisher's permission, which he equated to piracy. While legally correct, Gates's proposal was unprecedented in a community that was influenced by its ham radio legacy and hacker ethic, in which innovations and knowledge were freely shared in the community. Nevertheless, Gates was right about the market prospects and his efforts paid off: Microsoft Corporation became one of the world's most successful commercial enterprises, and a key player in the creation of a retail software industry.

Microsoft's key moment came when in the late 1970s, IBM was planning to enter the personal computer market with its IBM Personal Computer (PC), which was released in 1981. Gates licensed MS-DOS to IBM, which it had acquired from a local computer manufacturer. The story of how Microsoft acquired the original system (QDOS) has inspired much folklore, which often portrays Gates pouncing on a trivial mistake by Digital Research and stealing that company's lead in microcomputer operating systems. It is frequently cited by those who accuse Gates of unethical business practices. In reality, IBM did approach Digital Research for a version of CP/M for its upcoming IBM PC, and spoke to Gary Kildall's wife Dorothy. IBM representatives wanted Dorothy to sign their standard non-disclosure agreement, which Dorothy considered overly burdensome. IBM then returned to talk to Microsoft. He obtained rights to a cloned design of CP/M, QDOS, from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer products, licensed it to IBM, and MSDOS/IBMDOS was born. Later, IBM discovered that Gates' operating system could have infringement problems with CP/M, contacted Kildall, and in exchange for a promise not to sue, made an agreement that CP/M would be sold along with IBMDOS when the IBM PC was released. The price set by IBM for CP/M was $250 and for MSDOS/IBMDOS it was $40. Obviously, MSDOS/IBMDOS outsold CP/M many times over, eventually becoming the standard. By marketing MS-DOS aggressively to manufacturers of IBM-PC clones, Microsoft gained unprecedented visibility in the microcomputer industry, even rivalling IBM.

During the following years, Gates used his company's growing resources to displace competitors such as WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3, among many others. It is alleged (although never explained in detail) that Gates instructed Microsoft programmers to include special code in one of the MS-DOS versions to make Lotus 1-2-3 produce errors, making it appear to the users as if Lotus's software was the problem.

In the mid-1980s Gates became excited about the possibilities of compact disc for storage, and sponsored the publication of the book CD-ROM: The New Papyrus that promoted the idea of CD-ROM.

In the late 1980s, Microsoft and IBM partnered in the development of a more advanced operating system, OS/2. The operating system was marketed in connection with a new hardware design, the PS/2, that was proprietary and secret to IBM. As the project progressed, Gates oversaw continuing friction with IBM over the system's design, hardware support, and user interface. Ultimately he came to believe that IBM wanted to marginalize Microsoft from having any input in OS/2's development. On May 16, 1991 Gates announced to Microsoft employees that the OS/2 partnership was over and Microsoft would henceforth focus its platform efforts on Windows and the NT kernel. In the ensuing years OS/2 fell to the side and Windows became the favored PC platform.

Some years later, Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser displaced Netscape's Navigator, in a turn of events that many attributed to Microsoft's inclusion of Internet Explorer in Windows at no extra charge. An opposing view is that the inclusion in Windows was less important in Internet Explorer's adoption than Microsoft's improvement of the browser's features to a level comparable with Navigator.

As the architect of Microsoft's product strategy, Gates has aggressively broadened the company's range of products and, once it has obtained a leading position in a category, has vigorously defended that position. His and other Microsoft executives' strategic decisions have more than once drawn the concern of competition regulators, and in some cases have been ruled illegal.

In 2000, Gates promoted long-time friend and Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer to the role of Chief Executive Officer and took on the role of "Chief Software Architect".

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

With his wife, Gates founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charitable organization. Critics have called this a response to negative public outcry over the seemingly monopolistic and anti-competitive practices of his company, but those close to Gates say that he had long expressed his plan to eventually give away most (in 1997 the Washington Post reported 90%) of his large fortune. The foundation's grants have provided funds for underrepresented minority college scholarships, AIDS prevention, diseases that strike mainly in the third world, and other causes. In June 1999, Gates and his wife donated US$5 billion to their foundation, the largest single donation ever by living individuals. He has donated more than 100 million dollars to help kids with AIDS.

Accolades

Honorary KBE from the United Kingdom announced, 2004
Top 100 influential people in media, the Guardian, 2001
The Sunday Times power list, 1999
Upside Elite 100, Ranked 2nd, 1999
Top 50 Cyber Elite, TIME magazine, Ranked 1st, 1998
Top 100 most powerful people in sports, The Sporting News, Ranked 28th, 1997
CEO of the year, Chief Executive Officers magazine, 1994Entomologists have named the Bill Gates flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honour.

Estimated wealth

According to Forbes list of the World's Wealthiest People (figures in US Dollars):
1996 - $18.5 billion, ranked #1
1997 - $36.4 billion, ranked #2
1998 - $51.0 billion, ranked #1
1999 - $90.0 billion, ranked #1
2000 - $60.0 billion, ranked #1
2001 - $58.7 billion, ranked #1
2002 - $52.8 billion, ranked #1
2003 - $40.7 billion, ranked #1
2004 - $46.6 billion, ranked #1Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III, KBE, (born October 28, 1955), commonly known as Bill Gates, is the co-founder and current Chairman and Chief Software Architect of Microsoft. According to Forbes magazine in 2004, Gates is the wealthiest person in the world, a position he has held steadily for many years.

Biography

Bill Gates was born in Seattle, Washington to William H. Gates, Sr., a corporate lawyer, and Mary Maxwell Gates, board member of First Interstate Bank, Pacific Northwest Bell and the national board of United Way.

Gates attended Lakeside School, Seattle's most exclusive prep school, where he was able to develop his programming skills on the school's minicomputer. He later on went to study at Harvard University, but dropped out without graduating to pursue what would become a lifelong career in software development.

While he was a student at Harvard, he co-authored with Paul Allen the original Altair BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 (the first commercially successful personal computer) in the mid 1970s. It was inspired by BASIC, an easy-to-learn programming language developed at Dartmouth College for teaching purposes.

Gates married Melinda French on January 1, 1994. They have three children, Jennifer Katharine Gates (1996), Rory John Gates (1999) and Phoebe Adele Gates (2002). They live in a very large earth-sheltered home in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington. It is a very modern 21st century house in the "Pacific lodge" style, with advanced electrical and electronic systems everywhere. In one respect though it is more like an 18th or 19th century mansion: It has a large private library with a domed reading room.

Also in 1994, he acquired the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci; as of 2003 it was on display at the Seattle Art Museum.

In 1997, Gates was the victim of a bizarre extortion plot by Chicago resident Adam Quinn Pletcher. Gates testified at the subsequent trial. Pletcher was convicted and sentenced in July 1998 to six years in prison.

Microsoft Corporation

In 1975, Gates and Allen co-founded Microsoft Corporation to market their version of BASIC, called Microsoft BASIC. It was the primary interpreted computer language of the MS-DOS operating system, and was key to Microsoft's early commercial success.

In February 1976, Gates wrote the Open Letter to Hobbyists, which shocked the computer hobbyist community by asserting that a commercial market existed for computer software. Gates stated in the letter that software should not be copied without the publisher's permission, which he equated to piracy. While legally correct, Gates's proposal was unprecedented in a community that was influenced by its ham radio legacy and hacker ethic, in which innovations and knowledge were freely shared in the community. Nevertheless, Gates was right about the market prospects and his efforts paid off: Microsoft Corporation became one of the world's most successful commercial enterprises, and a key player in the creation of a retail software industry.

Microsoft's key moment came when in the late 1970s, IBM was planning to enter the personal computer market with its IBM Personal Computer (PC), which was released in 1981. Gates licensed MS-DOS to IBM, which it had acquired from a local computer manufacturer. The story of how Microsoft acquired the original system (QDOS) has inspired much folklore, which often portrays Gates pouncing on a trivial mistake by Digital Research and stealing that company's lead in microcomputer operating systems. It is frequently cited by those who accuse Gates of unethical business practices. In reality, IBM did approach Digital Research for a version of CP/M for its upcoming IBM PC, and spoke to Gary Kildall's wife Dorothy. IBM representatives wanted Dorothy to sign their standard non-disclosure agreement, which Dorothy considered overly burdensome. IBM then returned to talk to Microsoft. He obtained rights to a cloned design of CP/M, QDOS, from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer products, licensed it to IBM, and MSDOS/IBMDOS was born. Later, IBM discovered that Gates' operating system could have infringement problems with CP/M, contacted Kildall, and in exchange for a promise not to sue, made an agreement that CP/M would be sold along with IBMDOS when the IBM PC was released. The price set by IBM for CP/M was $250 and for MSDOS/IBMDOS it was $40. Obviously, MSDOS/IBMDOS outsold CP/M many times over, eventually becoming the standard. By marketing MS-DOS aggressively to manufacturers of IBM-PC clones, Microsoft gained unprecedented visibility in the microcomputer industry, even rivalling IBM.

During the following years, Gates used his company's growing resources to displace competitors such as WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3, among many others. It is alleged (although never explained in detail) that Gates instructed Microsoft programmers to include special code in one of the MS-DOS versions to make Lotus 1-2-3 produce errors, making it appear to the users as if Lotus's software was the problem.

In the mid-1980s Gates became excited about the possibilities of compact disc for storage, and sponsored the publication of the book CD-ROM: The New Papyrus that promoted the idea of CD-ROM.

In the late 1980s, Microsoft and IBM partnered in the development of a more advanced operating system, OS/2. The operating system was marketed in connection with a new hardware design, the PS/2, that was proprietary and secret to IBM. As the project progressed, Gates oversaw continuing friction with IBM over the system's design, hardware support, and user interface. Ultimately he came to believe that IBM wanted to marginalize Microsoft from having any input in OS/2's development. On May 16, 1991 Gates announced to Microsoft employees that the OS/2 partnership was over and Microsoft would henceforth focus its platform efforts on Windows and the NT kernel. In the ensuing years OS/2 fell to the side and Windows became the favored PC platform.

Some years later, Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser displaced Netscape's Navigator, in a turn of events that many attributed to Microsoft's inclusion of Internet Explorer in Windows at no extra charge. An opposing view is that the inclusion in Windows was less important in Internet Explorer's adoption than Microsoft's improvement of the browser's features to a level comparable with Navigator.

As the architect of Microsoft's product strategy, Gates has aggressively broadened the company's range of products and, once it has obtained a leading position in a category, has vigorously defended that position. His and other Microsoft executives' strategic decisions have more than once drawn the concern of competition regulators, and in some cases have been ruled illegal.

In 2000, Gates promoted long-time friend and Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer to the role of Chief Executive Officer and took on the role of "Chief Software Architect".

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

With his wife, Gates founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charitable organization. Critics have called this a response to negative public outcry over the seemingly monopolistic and anti-competitive practices of his company, but those close to Gates say that he had long expressed his plan to eventually give away most (in 1997 the Washington Post reported 90%) of his large fortune. The foundation's grants have provided funds for underrepresented minority college scholarships, AIDS prevention, diseases that strike mainly in the third world, and other causes. In June 1999, Gates and his wife donated US$5 billion to their foundation, the largest single donation ever by living individuals. He has donated more than 100 million dollars to help kids with AIDS.

Accolades

Honorary KBE from the United Kingdom announced, 2004
Top 100 influential people in media, the Guardian, 2001
The Sunday Times power list, 1999
Upside Elite 100, Ranked 2nd, 1999
Top 50 Cyber Elite, TIME magazine, Ranked 1st, 1998
Top 100 most powerful people in sports, The Sporting News, Ranked 28th, 1997
CEO of the year, Chief Executive Officers magazine, 1994Entomologists have named the Bill Gates flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honour.

Estimated wealth

According to Forbes list of the World's Wealthiest People (figures in US Dollars):
1996 - $18.5 billion, ranked #1
1997 - $36.4 billion, ranked #2
1998 - $51.0 billion, ranked #1
1999 - $90.0 billion, ranked #1
2000 - $60.0 billion, ranked #1
2001 - $58.7 billion, ranked #1
2002 - $52.8 billion, ranked #1
2003 - $40.7 billion, ranked #1
2004 - $46.6 billion, ranked #1