Management: Introduction to Computer
A computer can be defined as an electronic device, which manipulates data or information and has the capability and ability to process, store, and retrieve data. It can be used for document typing, internet searching, surfing, and emailing. Computer can also be used in handling accounting, spreadsheets, database management, games, and presentations. The development and production of the present-day computer is credited to the result of advances and progress in technologies and need for quantification. Abacus, which was one of the first counting machines, paved the way for the production and manufacture of computer (Kopplin, 2002).
The first freely coded and programmable computer was invented in the year 1936, since then, different men and women have come up with new diverse researches, opinions, and finds that has propelled computers to their current state of functionality. There are many pioneers in this field, but in this paper, I am going to write a biographical piece of William Henry Bill Gates, as one of the key contributor, to the development and advancement in computers.
William Henry Bill Gates otherwise commonly known simply as Bill gates is known worldwide as the founder of Microsoft. He was born on 28 October 1955 in Seattle, Washington in the United States of American to William H. Gates, Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates (Burlingame, 2004, p178). He is an accomplished philanthropist, business magnate, author, and the chairperson of Microsoft foundation. He founded the software foundation and company with Paul Allen, who is also elite in the world of computers. Bill Gates is enjoyed a consistent ranking as one of the world's richest people, who stood as the wealthiest from the year 1995 to 2009. In the course of his career and operations at Microsoft, Bill Gates held both the Chief Executive Officers (CEO) positions and the chief software architect’s position. He has also holds the largest shares of more than 8% of common stock in the company. Bill is not only a computer gig, but is also known to have coauthored or author several computer and leadership books.
Bill Gates has grown to transform into one of the best-known and world leading entrepreneurs of a self-initiative computer revolution project. Although many admire him, a number of business and company insiders have rose up to criticize his tactics in business (Schuman, 2001, p. 100). In these present and later stages of his momentous career, Bill has played a key role in the aid and donation sector. He has involved himself in a series of philanthropic endeavors, contributing and donating hefty amounts of cash to a number of orphanages in Africa, charitable organizations and schools and scientific research programs in various institutes through his Foundation, which was established in the year 2000. In January of the same year, he stepped down as the CEO of Microsoft, but remained as chairperson and chief software architect of the company. Gates announced his intentions of him relieving himself from full-time job to a part time one at the company (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) in June 2006. He slowly relinquished his duties and tasks as chief software architect to Ray Ozzie, and appointed Craig Mundie as strategy and chief research officer. He stopped his full-time day duties at Microsoft on 27 June 2008, but he remains and acts as a non-executive chairperson of the Microsoft Company (Solomon, 2009, p. 29).
Bill Gates was born and raised in an upper middle class family. His dad was an established lawyer, and his mother was a member of the board of directors for the United Way and First Interstate BancSystem. In his early life, his parents had a law career option for him in mind. When he was 13 years, his parents enrolled him in an executive preparatory school known as the Lakeside School. During his eighth grade, a Club (Mothers Club) at his school bought for the school’s students a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer an ASR-33 Teletype terminal. Gates developed an interest in the General Electronic (GE) system programming and got an exemption from mathematics classes to study and pursue the subject of his interest. Deploying all his energy and skill to the interest, he managed to write his first running computer program on the GE machine. It was a tic-tac-toe implementation, which allowed operators to play games on the computer, against the computer. He was greatly fascinated by his writing and the machine because of the perfect execution of software code. Upon the exhaustion of Mothers Club’s donation, Gates and other students searched for time on other systems such as DEC PDP minicomputers. Later on during the studies, one of the systems providers (PDP-10) banned Gates and other students from Lakeside school, from using it services, because they were caught exploiting bugs installed in the computer’s operating system to gain access to free computer time.
After the ban, Gates chose to go to CCC's offices to study the source code for different programs that operated on the system, including machine language, FORTRAN, and LISP programs. He continued with the CCC’s arrangement until the year 1970, when the company collapsed. Information Sciences, Inc. hired four of the best Lakeside students to help it in the writing of programs for payroll in COBOL. It provided them with computer royalties and time. Gates good work and abilities, earned him recognition amongst many people in the business. His administrators had much delight and assurance in him that they gave him the opportunity to write the school's computer program that would schedule students’ in classes. He took up the task and executed it perfectly. At age 17, he ventured into writing traffic counters programs for Traf-O-Date. The programs were based on the processor, Intel 8008 and he did the work with some help from Allen, a coworker at the company. Gate’s overwhelming good work managed to earn him a service as a congressional page in the United States House of Representatives in early 1973.
In the same year, Gates graduated from his school with a scorecard of 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT and then enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn. Gates continued with his thirst for new program creation in his collage life. During his sophomore year, he managed to come up with an algorithm for sorting pancake. The program was a solution to an unsolved problem. It was presented to them in Combinatorics class by one of the professor. The program he wrote to the record as the best and fastest version ever written for over thirty years. In collaboration with Harvard’s Computer Scientist professor, Christos Papadimitriou he formalized the solution and made a publication.
Gates spent most of his time using the computers at school. This made him to have an unusual learning program in comparison to other students. Paul Allen, his former coworker joined him at Honeywell in 1974, where they continued working together, until they stated their own company in 1975 (Lesinski, 2008, p. 95).
Reference
Burlingame, D., 2004. Gates, William H., III, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:
Philanthropy in America. A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, 3(1), pp.178-192.
Kopplin J., 2002. Computer Science Lab, An Illustrated History of Computers Part , [online]
Available at:< http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/History.htm> [Accessed
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Lesinski, M.J., 2008. Finding the Future. Bill Gates: Entrepreneur and Philanthropist. New
York: Twenty-First Century Publisher.
Schuman, A.M., 2001. Bill Gates. Bill Gates: Computer Mogul and Philanthropist. New York:
Enslow Publishers.
Solomon, L.D., 2009. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Tech Billionaire$: Reshaping
Philanthropy in a Quest for a Better World. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
