No one can say that Bill Gates’s story is one of rags to riches. There was no need for him to fight his way out of the ghetto or pull himself up by his bootstraps. Nonetheless, his early life is an object lesson in making the most of the advantages bestowed upon you.
William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington state, on 28 October 1955. His parents were William Gates, Sr, a lawyer, and Mary, a teacher and businesswoman, and Bill would be their middle child and only son.The family was keen on card games and so Bill came to be known as Trey, a card-player’s term for a ‘Three’ that reflected his ‘III’ designation.
Both parents were thoughtful and well educated, and wished the same for their offspring. From his youngest days, Bill was encouraged to occupy himself with interests that would stretch the mind.So, for instance, television was banned on school nights – a rule with which Gates was relatively easily reconciled. As he would tell an interviewer in 1986, ‘I’m not one of those people who hates TV , but I don’t think it exercises your mind much.’ Instead of being glued to the screen, the Gates family instead indulged their passion for, among other pastimes, conversation, games and reading.
This latter activity fundamentally moulded Gates’s life through its many and varied phases, and we shall look at his relationship with books in more depth later (see ‘Read Like Bill Gates’, here). Meanwhile, family discussions on everything from current affairs to culture, sport and the trivia of everyday life ensured that the young Bill had a broad base of interests and the ability to articulate his opinions. Contrary to the popular image of the average trailblazing techno-geek, Bill was never the introverted little boy who found comfort behind the protection of a computer screen.
In fact, he was something of an extrovert, and a highly competitive one at that. As might be expected in a family that awarded him a nickname related to card playing, the Gates clan encouraged competitiveness. As an example, each year the family holidayed in an area by the Hood Canal, near Puget Sound. The Gateses would go with several other young families and the highlight of the vacation was always a mini-Olympics in which they all competed. Although Bill was quite a small physical specimen, he was doughty and determined. Only the foolhardy underestimated him as an opponent. Speaking to author Janet Lowe in 1998, he revealed, ‘In the summer, we’d … play a lot of competitive games – relay races, egg tosses, Capture the Flag. It was always a great time, and it gave all of us a sense that we could compete and succeed.’
In retrospect, it should come as little surprise that Bill was particularly keen on games of strategy, especially chess (in which he desired to be a Grandmaster) and ‘Go’. His performance benefitted from his natural grasp of logic and a seriously impressive memory. On one occasion, the minister at the family church offered a prize to anyone who could learn the Sermon on the Mount off by heart. Gates was, of course, word perfect when he came to deliver it. His youthfully exuberant explanation when the minister asked how he had managed such a feat: ‘I can do any-thing I set my mind to.’
His ability to memorize is further evidenced by the fact that well into adulthood he was able to reel off his lines from a high-school play in which he appeared. Such perfect recall proved most useful as his passion for computer programming grew, with his ability to remember great expanses of computer code putting him ahead of the game.
Growing up in an era of Boys’ Own-tales of space exploration, Gates was also open to the technological possibilities of the future. When he was six, he visited the world’s fair in Seattle, the centrepiece of which was an awesomely tall observation tower known as the Space Needle. In America in the early 1960s, the future was a place in which everything was possible and he bought into the idea wholeheartedly. In Gates’s case, the boy really was the father of the man, as it is a dream that he has never let go of.
Gates showed promise in his early years at school but his attention was prone to wander, so in sixth grade (around the age of eleven) his parents moved him to a private school, Lakeside, where they hoped he would be given work to challenge his burgeoning intellect. He demonstrated particular potential in the areas of mathematics and science – when he took his SATs in 1973 he scored a perfect 800 on the maths component. Not that he was a one-trick pony, though: he continued to nurture a broad range of interests, showing a liking for drama and politics in his senior years. Many years later he would acknowledge that his teens were pivotal in his development, declaring to Steven Levy, author of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, that his ‘software mind’ was shaped by the time he was seventeen.
Others were quick to see his promise. Several Ivy League universities came calling and he chose Harvard. However, like his great rival-to-be, Steve Jobs, he skipped a lot of classes once he was in college. He continued to excel in those subjects that interested him but simply disengaged with those that did not. He did, though, make full use of the computer labs, undertaking his own projects and sometimes spending days at a time there. And when he got bored, he filled his hours with poker marathons.
Gates was born into an environment where lively intellect was not only admired but actively encouraged. Quick-witted, thoughtful and excited by what the world had to offer, he thrived. He may not have been the model student – especially in those areas that captured his imagination less – but he embraced his own intelligence and never felt the need, as so many children do, to hide it from the world.
In a 2000 book by Cynthia Crossen, The Rich and How They Got That Way, Gates is quoted as saying: ‘Smartness is an ability to absorb new facts. To ask an insightful question. To absorb it in real time. A capacity to remember. To relate to domains that may not seem connected at first.’ It is a credo that has served him well.
Post a Comment