Bill Gates, billionaire chairman and
chief executive officer of the Microsoft Corporation - was born in Seattle in
the north-west US on October 28, 1955. A “typical competitive Scorpio”, he
says. Gates’ father was an attorney in Seattle, and his mother a teacher. He
has two sisters, one older and one younger than him.
Gates went to a private school in
Seattle, and later to college at Harvard. He dropped out of Harvard at 19 when
he and his friend Paul Allen created the company Microsoft - now the leading
provider of software for personal computers in the world.
Gates’ feeling that personal computers
would be big business, and his continual clear vision, are central to Microsoft
and to the entire software industry today. Starting out as two people, Gates
and Allen, Microsoft grew quickly to 12 people by 1979, and Allen and Gates
decided to move from Albuquerque to Seattle. Within a year the company had
grown to 35 and they hired their first professional manager, Steve Bullmer. To
encourage Bullmer to join them they offered him a stake of Microsoft - he now
owns 5%, worth 2.7 billion dollars. Today Microsoft employs more than 20,000
people in 48 countries of the world.
When Gates and Allen first set up in
business, they learned as they went along. Paul Allen admits that “our
management style was a little loose in the beginning. We both took part in
every decision. If there was a difference between our roles, I was probably the
one always pushing a little bit in terms of new technology and new products,
and Bill was more interested in doing negotiations and contracts and business
deals.”
Paul Allen left the company in 1983 when
he became ill with Hodgkins Disease. He was badly missed by Bill Gates for a
long time.
In Hawaii on January 1, 1994 Gates
married Melinda, a product manager at Microsoft. They have a daughter, born in
1996. One of the richest men in the world, Gates annually gives away more than
most people earn in a lifetime. He says he plans to give most of his money away
in about ten years, “I plan to go from the world’s richest man to the world’s
largest philanthropist.”
Gates is interested in biotechnology and
is on the board of Darwin Molecular and the Icos Corporation. He is an
enthusiastic reader and also enjoys golf and bridge. He is a very hard worker
and his idea of relaxation is to race Melinda at identical jigsaw puzzles.
1. Find an article with at least
300 words on Businessman or women bioghraphy or a new/ground breaking company.
2. How the tenses use.
3. Restate gerund to infinitave or
infinitave to gerund.
4. Show use of
personal/possesive/reflexive pronouns.
The Answer is:
2. Tenses is Simple Past Tense
3.
He
says he plans to give
most of his money away in about ten years, “I plan to go from the world’s
richest man to the world’s largest philanthropist.”
(Sixth paragraph, Line 3)
Replace to:
He
says he plans giving
most of his money away in about ten years, “I plan to go from the world’s
richest man to the world’s largest philanthropist.”
4.
He dropped out of Harvard at 19 when he and his friend
Paul Allen created the company Microsoft - now the leading provider of software
for personal computers in the world.
(Second paragraph, Line 1)
