Bill Gates

📍7308 44th Avenue NE, Seattle, WA 98115, USA

“William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle in October 1955 and grew up in the city's comfortable north-east neighbourhoods, first in View Ridge and then in Laurelhurst, the son of Bill Gates Sr, a lawyer, and Mary Maxwell Gates, a schoolteacher and civic leader. The household was full of books, games and lively dinner-table debate, and his parents expected their children to succeed. At thirteen he went to Lakeside School, where in 1968 the Mothers' Club used proceeds from a rummage sale to buy time on a computer terminal, something few schools or even universities had at the time. Gates was captivated, and spent every hour he could at the terminal with friends including Paul Allen, writing programs and teaching himself how software worked. Those Lakeside years led directly to the founding of Microsoft with Allen in 1975.”

Sources: Gates, B. The Road Ahead (1995), Viking; Manes, S. & Andrews, P. Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry (1993), Doubleday; Wallace, J. & Erickson, J. Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire (1992)