Bill Gates

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

to computers. In the spring of 1968, the Lakeside prep school decided that it should acquaint the student body with the world of computers. Computers were still too large and costly for the school to purchase its own. Instead, the school had a fundraiser and bought computer time on a DEC PDP-10 owned by General Electric. A few thousand dollars were raised which the school figured would buy more than enough time to last into the next school year. However, Lakeside had drastically underestimated the allure this machine would have for a hand full of young students. and a few other Lakeside students immediately became inseparable from the computer. They would stay in the computer room all day and night, writing programs, reading computer literature and anything else they could to learn about computing. Soon Gates and the others started running into problems with the faculty. Their homework was being turned in late, they were skipping classes to be in the computer room and worst of ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

their computer, the Computer Center Corporation decided to hire the students to find bugs and expose weaknesses in the computer system. In return for the Lakeside Programming Group's help, the Computer Center Corporation would give them unlimited computer time. The boys could not refuse. Gates is quoted as saying, "It was when we got free time at C-cubed (Computer Center Corporation) that we really got into computers. I mean, then I became hardcore. It was day and night" (Wallace p. 30). Although the group was hired just to find bugs, they also read any computer-related material that the day shift had left behind. The young hackers would even pick employees for new information. It was ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: