Daily Tech History: October 28, 1955 — Bill Gates Is Born

On October 28, 1955, William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington. Two decades later, that kid would co-found Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen, after the pair wrote a version of the BASIC programming language for the Altair 8800, one of the first commercially successful personal computers. Gates dropped out of Harvard at 19 to chase the opportunity full time.

What followed was one of the defining business stories of the computer age. Microsoft’s deal to supply the operating system for IBM’s first PC in 1981 (and, crucially, its decision to keep licensing that software to other manufacturers) turned the company into the dominant force in personal computing software for decades. Gates served as CEO until 2000 and chairman into the 2010s, before shifting his focus to philanthropy through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has become one of the largest private charitable organizations in the world.

Also born on this day: Marcian “Ted” Hoff Jr., in 1937. Hoff joined Intel in 1968 and is credited as a key architect of the Intel 4004, released in 1971 and widely regarded as the first commercially available microprocessor — the breakthrough that helped make the personal computer possible in the first place. It’s a fitting coincidence that the two men are linked by the same birthday.

Source: Computer History Museum, Wikipedia

Daily Tech History is a running series looking back at notable moments in technology on this date.