Computers: A Hard-Core Technoid

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He looks like an undernourished grad student as he waits for a plane at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. His gray sweater has patches on the elbows; his shoes are scuffed; his ginger hair flops over a pair of steel-framed glasses. He fidgets with a thick pile of papers that contain preliminary sketches for a new portable computer and technical details for silicon chips that will be used in machines of the late 1980s. The tag on his battered black suitcase reads "William H. Gates, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, Microsoft."

Gates, 28, has helped catapult Microsoft to the forefront of the software industry, and his list of customers includes every major manufacturer of personal computers. When IBM wanted an operating system for its Personal Computer, it turned to Gates. When Apple needed software for its Macintosh, it gave Microsoft a test model to use in writing the programs. Gates helped with the design of Radio Shack's Model 100, the first truly portable computer. Microsoft produced the MSX systems software that will be used for a new series of Japanese computers. Thanks to that business (and more), Gates, who owns almost half of the privately held company, has become America's software tycoon.

The son of a prominent Seattle lawyer, Gates has spent most of his life around computers. He initially encountered them as a seventh-grader in 1967 when the proceeds from a mothers' club rummage sale were used to buy a machine for Seattle's Lakeside School. Gates devised a class-scheduling program so that he could take courses with the prettiest girls. Recalls Lakeside Math Teacher Fred Wright: "Bill had the ability to see shortcuts."

Teaming up with Paul Allen, a friend and schoolmate, Gates formed a pint-size company, Traf-O-Data, that studied traffic patterns for small towns near Seattle. When he was 15 and a tenth-grader, the company grossed $20,000. Says Gates in his characteristic computerspeak: "I was a hard-core tech-Is noid." He temporarily abandoned computers for a year in the early 1970s for such nontechnical pursuits as acting in the school play, but he did not lose his touch for making money. While he was working as a congressional page in 1972, he and a friend snapped up 5,000 McGovern-Eagleton campaign buttons for a nickel each just after South Dakota's George McGovern dumped Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton from the Democratic ticket. They later sold the scarce mementos for as much as $25 each.

After the first microprocessor was introduced in 1972, Gates and Allen tried to build a personal computer, but eventually decided to stick with software. Says Allen: