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revolution (and to become, like Ford, immensely rich). He
was twenty years old.
Gates recognized Altair’s fatal flaw: It did little more
than cause a few lights to blink in complex ways. It lacked
internal instructions to convert electrical signals into letters
and numbers. He determined to write instructions—the
software—to make the personal computer useful. Gates and
Paul Allen, a school friend, telephoned Ed Roberts, the presi-
dent of MITS, manufacturer of the Altair. They told him they
had written operating software for the machine. Roberts
was skeptical. Scores of programmers had made such
claims, he said, but none had actually done it. He told them
to bring their software to the company headquarters in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, within two months.“P
roject Breakthrough! World’s First Minicomputer Kit to
Rival Commercial Models.” This headline in the
January 1975 issue of Popular Electronicstriggered the
neurons in Bill Gates’s brain. In an instant, he perceived that
the revolution had begun. Most earlier computers cost
hundreds of thousands of dollars, filled room-sized air-
conditioned vaults, and were found in university science
centers, government agencies, and corporate headquarters.
But this kit cost only $397. The computer (its name—Altair—
came from a planet in the TV series Star Trek), could fit on a
desktop. Gates believed that computers like this would soon
be as much a part of life as telephones or automobiles.
Armed with the slogan,“A computer on every desktop,”
Gates resolved to become the Henry Ford of the computer
AMERICAN LIVES
Bill Gates
Bill Gates as a young CEO at Microsoft.