Bill Gates, we'll miss you. Not just because you're the ultimate geek-villain-pioneer-entrepreneur-monopolist. But because you've always been there for us. To love. To hate. To envy. To pick on. So this month, your last as a full-time Microsoft employee, we realized it was only right and proper to look back on your storied career. (Or we just love your mug shot from the Albuquerque arrest.)
1950s
October 28, 1955
William Henry Gates III is born in Seattle. His grandmother Adelle nicknames him "Trey," the cardplayer's term for a three. He later becomes an avid poker player.
1960s
1967
Gates, a difficult sixth grader, asks his mother, "Have you ever tried thinking?"
Fall 1967
Gates' parents enroll him in Lakeside School, an exclusive boys school in Seattle. He is the smallest kid in the class, yet has size 13 feet.
1968
Gates and Lakeside classmate Paul Allen learn Basic from a manual. Within a few weeks, the pair exhaust the school's $3,000 annual budget for time on a PDP-10 computer. The boys soon land a contract with the Computer Center Corporation to report PDP-10 software bugs in exchange for computer time.
1970s
1971
Gates writes programs for Lakeside, including one that creates class schedules; he manages to put himself in classes with the "right" girls.
September 1973
Gates enrolls at Harvard University. Academically, his record is spotty — having a near-photographic memory helps him cram, but he often misses class, neglecting showers and living on pizza and soda while programming and playing poker. He befriends Steve Ballmer, who lives down the hall in the same dormitory.
January 1975
Paul Allen sees the cover of Popular Electronics — a picture of the Altair 8800 computer and the headline "World's First Minicomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models". He buys the issue and rushes to Gates' room. A few days later, Gates calls MITS, maker of the Altair, and tells the company he and Allen could develop a version of Basic for the 8800.
February 1, 1975
Gates and Allen finish the code and sell it to MITS for $3,000 plus a percentage of royalties up to $180,000.
November 26, 1976
Gates and Allen register the trade name Microsoft. They had considered the name Allen & Gates Inc., then Micro-Soft, but decided to drop the hyphen. Allen is 23, Gates 21.
January 1977
Gates takes a leave of absence from Harvard and establishes Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where MITS is headquartered.
1977
On several occasions, Gates' secretary enters the Microsoft building to find him crumpled on the floor, asleep. He continues to live on pizza and is a demanding boss, often fighting with colleagues. Among his favorite responses: "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
Late 1977
Gates is arrested several times for speeding in his Porsche 911 — once sans driver's license. Allen bails him out on at least one occasion.
December 1978
Microsoft's year-end sales exceed $1 million.
January 1, 1979
Microsoft moves its headquarters to Bellevue, Washington.
1980s
August 28, 1980
Gates signs a contract with IBM, agreeing to develop software for the PC. Later he buys an operating system called QDOS for $50,000, improves it, renames it DOS, and licenses it to IBM.
August 12, 1981
IBM starts shipping the personal computer with MS-DOS 1.0.
1982
In its first year on the market, MS-DOS is licensed to 50 hardware manufacturers.
February 18, 1983
Paul Allen resigns as Microsoft's executive vice president during a bout with Hodgkin's disease. He goes on to buy a basketball team, found a music museum, and own the third-largest yacht in the world.
November 10, 1983
Windows debuts. The product is an extension of MS-DOS that provides a graphical user interface.
January 24, 1984
Gates attends an event to introduce the Macintosh — MS is one of the first software developers for Apple's machine.
1985
Gates reportedly abuses a female executive so badly that she asks to be transferred. 1
August 12, 1985
After 10 years, Microsoft sales reach $140 million.
March 13, 1986
Microsoft goes public at $21 per share. MSFT ends the day at $28, raising $61 million for the company.
1987
Gates meets Melinda French at a Microsoft press event in Manhattan.
August 1, 1989
Microsoft Office debuts.
1990s
May 13, 1990
Gates schedules a retreat for Microsoft company executives — on Mother's Day.
June 1990
The Federal Trade Commission launches a probe into possible collusion between Microsoft and IBM in the PC software market.
April 11, 1993
On a chartered flight from Florida to Seattle, Gates proposes to Melinda. He has the plane make a stop in Omaha so the couple can go ring shopping with Warren Buffett.
August 20, 1993
The Justice Department takes over the Microsoft investigation from the FTC.
January 1, 1994
Bill and Melinda are married in a small ceremony on the Hawaiian island of Lanai. As a surprise, Gates hires Willie Nelson — one of Melinda's favorite singers — to perform.
April 1994
The good news? Gates scores his first Wired cover story. The bad? It's about the government's antitrust case against Microsoft.
July 1994
Microsoft agrees to a federal consent decree, pledging to abandon particularly egregious anticompetitive business practices (such as requiring hardware manufacturers to pay for MS-DOS for every machine they produce with a particular microprocessor, even if the operating system isn't on it).
November 11, 1994
Gates buys da Vinci's Codex Hammer — a 72-page collection of scientific writings — for $30.8 million. He agrees to put the Codex on public display.
1995
Gates appears in a commercial for Coke (he's reportedly a Diet Coke fan): The billionaire searches his pockets for change to buy a drink.
July 17, 1995
Gates becomes the richest man in the world at 39, with a fortune of $12.9 billion. Microsoft's revenue for 1995 is $5.9 billion; the company has 17,801 employees.
August 24, 1995
Microsoft introduces Internet Explorer.
June 1996
Wired puts Gates on its cover for the second time, this time with a Photoshopped picture of the geek-mogul in a bathing suit. How else do you depict Microsoft's entry into the media business?
December 1996
Microsoft stock hits a high — up 88 percent from the previous December. On paper, Gates made $30 million per day that year.
October 20, 1997
Microsoft is slapped with a $1 million-a-day fine for allegedly violating the 1994 consent decree. The Justice Department accuses the company of breaking the agreement by requiring manufacturers to add Internet Explorer to their hardware products if they want a Windows 95 license.
February 4, 1998
Gates is hit in the face with a cream pie while walking to meet with Belgian government officials and businessmen. He responds by saying the pie just wasn't that tasty.
May 18, 1998
The Justice Department and 20 state attorneys general sue Microsoft for violating the consent decree by bundling a Web browser into its OS.
November 9, 1998
In a videotaped deposition, Gates gently rocks as he testifies that he never intended to keep other companies out of the software business. Armchair doctors speculate that he has Asperger's syndrome.
1999
Gates and his wife rename the William H. Gates foundation the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and set out to reduce inequities around the world.
2000s
January 13, 2000
Gates steps down as Microsoft's CEO to become chief software architect, handing over the reins to Steve Ballmer.
June 7, 2000 US federal district judge Thomas Penfield Jackson orders that Microsoft be split in two.
November 2000
Gates scores another Wired cover, this one for the untold story of the Microsoft antitrust case.
June 28, 2001
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturns Jackson's decision.
2002
According to a poll of teenagers in Hong Kong and China, Gates is more idolized than Chinese Communist icon Mao Tse-tung.
March 2, 2005
Gates receives an honorary knighthood at Buckingham Palace, joining the ranks of Rudy Giuliani and Steven Spielberg and entitling him to put the letters "KBE" after his name.
September 14, 2005
Gates makes a Napoleon Dynamite spoof video for a software developers conference. In it, he goes back to college and wears a shirt that reads "Vote for Steveo".
December 2005
Bill and Melinda Gates join Bono as Time's Persons of the Year.
June 15, 2006
Gates announces his retirement from day-to-day activities at Microsoft, his role to be phased out over the course of two years.
June 26, 2006
With the addition of over $30 billion from Buffett, the Gates Foundation doubles in size to become the largest transparently operated charitable organization in the world.
March 2008
After 13 years atop Forbes' list of the world's richest, Gates slips to the third position with a mere $58 billion. His old card-playing buddy Buffett replaces him at number one. Poor, poor Bill.
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