- Bill Gates picked up a passion for politics while working as a congressional page.
- While computers were still a “big unknown” in 1972, politics was a potential backup plan for Gates.
- In his memoir, “Source Code: My Beginnings,” Gates wrote about his life before starting Microsoft.
In 1972, 17-year-old Bill Gates wasn’t sure computers would take off like he hoped, so he turned to a backup plan: politics.
Gates, who would eventually co-found one of the most valuable tech companies in the world, Microsoft, worked as a congressional page for the House of Representatives in Olympia, Washington, and Washington, D.C., as a high schooler.
In his memoir, “Source Code: My Beginnings,” Gates told of how he became interested in software at a young age and how he spent time programming in the basement of the University of Washington. Although he’d found a passion in the budding industry, computers were still “a big unknown” at the time, Gates said.
He spent a month working on Capitol Hill every day. At the time, Gates said he saw a career in computers as a “possible path,” but he was taken by the drama of working in politics.
His stint in Washington. D.C., coincided with presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton dropping out of the 1972 race — Gates said he later sold Eagleton’s campaign pins as collectors’ items. Working as a page during that time “was the closest thing to a political thriller I’d ever witnessed,” Gates said.
After a month on The Hill, Gates said he began to consider a career in politics and government as a serious path he could take, starting with studying law. By the time he was applying for college, Gates said he saw a “tantalizing menu of different possibilities” in university catalogs.
In fact, he wrote in his application essay to Harvard that he didn’t plan to continue concentrating on computers — telling the university that he was “most interested in business or law.” He told Yale that he wanted to go into government work.
Gates said his breakthrough in computing came in December 1974 with the advent of the first successful minicomputer kit by MITS, a US-based electronics company. From there, Gates and his Microsoft cofounder, Paul Allen, worked on crafting a new programming language for the Altair 8800.
Though he didn’t end up becoming a politician or finishing his college degree at Harvard, Gates is politically active as a donor and philanthropist. He privately said he donated $50 million to pro-Kamala Harris super-PAC Future Forward, The New York Times reported in October.
“It’s nearly impossible to spend time in Congress, even on that lowest level, and not get swept up by it,” he wrote.
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