Bill Gates has become one of the most successful and prolific entrepreneurs in history, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone that doesn’t know his name or the company he founded, Microsoft. But many people don’t know much about Bill Gates as a person. In this blog, we have covered 10 interesting facts about Bill Gates that might surprise you.
1. His first computer was a converted Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100.
The diminutive computer came with a whopping (by today’s standards) 4KB of RAM, a 20-character-per-line display and two cassette tape drives. If that wasn’t cutting edge enough for you, Gates didn’t even own one—he wrote code on paper and transferred it to other people’s machines via Altair BASIC sheets.
2. He wrote his first program on this computer, which is now in the Smithsonian Museum.
The Altair 8800 was released in 1975, and it featured a BASIC programming language. While it sold about 50,000 units at a price of $397, MITS—the company that created it—only grossed $97,000 from sales. But one of those buyers was 15-year-old Bill Gates. The future billionaire wrote his first computer program on that machine, which is now housed in Washington’s National Museum of American History as an important artifact in computing history.
3. He dropped out of Harvard but received an honorary degree in 2007
Dropping out of Harvard to start Microsoft was a big decision for Gates, but it turned out to be one of his best moves. In 2007, he received an honorary degree from Harvard for his accomplishments in business and for being an outstanding citizen and philanthropist.
4. The life expectancy in his home country – USA – will increase by 33 years over the next 50 years.
This is incredible! Thanks to vaccines, people are living longer and better lives. The advances in our understanding of vaccines is really incredible. It’s sad that so many people in third world countries don’t have access to these life-saving drugs. I hope they do it soon, before an outbreak happens and kills thousands or millions of people.
5. His family’s wealth is estimated at $90.7 billion.
As of 2014, it’s been reported that his family has amassed a fortune of $90.7 billion. This is up from $76 billion in 2013.
6. He frequently gives away half his annual income to charity. In 2014 he gave away $2.5 billion.
I’m pleased to give more money to these and other charities, he wrote in a statement on his website. We don’t need it — our foundation is doing fine financially. (It’s made a lot of people rich, including me.) There are many things we can do besides sit on [our] wealth that ensures we will be well taken care of in case something happens to either one of us.
7. He has never owned a car because his father thought it was too expensive.
Starting with a 300 SL Mercedes sports car, Allen had bought and sold a number of cars over time. He finally disposed of them all in 1968 when he read an analysis by Consumer Reports that indicated that the cost per mile of owning and operating a car exceeded its sticker price by more than 200 percent. Since then, Allen has not owned a car; he uses public transportation or travels by foot or bicycle. In 1997, Forbes magazine estimated his annual expenses at $130,000 to $180,000 and his personal investment portfolio then was worth $9 billion.
8. He loves giving money away even though he admits that sometimes he feels like a little boy playing with an extraordinary toy.
I still like to think of myself as a geek in many ways, and so I get excited by ideas. I’ll just toss them around in my head until they’re fully formed. He was ranked seventh on Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires—with a net worth estimated at $53 billion. Until October 2008, he held a position on Microsoft’s board of directors but quit for personal reasons that were not revealed. In 2009, he rejoined its board after Steven Ballmer replaced him as CEO. He met his wife Melinda when both were students at Harvard University: she was studying industrial economics; he was writing software code.
9. People from over 70 countries work for Microsoft as part of his strategy to make Microsoft products available all over the world.
In his quest to become a truly global company, Microsoft has employees in 70 countries. To find out if you work for Microsoft, look at your business card; most staffers wear them. (They can’t use Microsoft Corporation on it, though.)
10. In 2000, he sold his company shares worth $13.9 billion to start The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he currently serves as its chairman. The foundation strives to improve healthcare and reduce extreme poverty around the world.
During a Reddit Ask Me Anything session in 2014, Gates said that his three favorite books are Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and Factfulness by Hans Rosling. The latter is a book that aims to bust myths about global development with data and an exploration of how human minds process information. As with all things Gates, it became a New York Times bestseller.: In addition to being one of America’s richest men, Bill Gates has been listed as one of Time magazine’s most influential people and was recently named among Forbes’ 100 most powerful people.
Conclusion
The above-mentioned unknown facts about Bill Gates are astonishing. Bill Gates is one of the most well-known people on the planet for good reason. Although he is not as well-known as his long-time rival and sometimes-almost-friend, the late Steve Jobs, he is an intriguing figure in his own right. This is due, in part, to the fact that Gates was a co-founder of Microsoft, which means that his name is synonymous not only with wealth, but also with the fundamental way that computers have changed our lives in recent decades.
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