Meet the proud father Mr.William H.Gates Sr

William Henry Gates, Sr. (born William Henry Gates II; November 30, 1925) is a retired American attorney and philanthropist and author of the book Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime. He is the father of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Gates was born in Bremerton, Washington, to William Henry Gates I or Sr. (Bremerton, Washington, March 14, 1891 – Bremerton, Washington, August 17, 1969), and wife (married c. 1913) Lillian Elizabeth Rice (Bremerton, Washington, 1891 – Bremerton, Washington, November 27, 1966). He was the third in his family to have the same name, his grandfather being the first William Henry Gates. His paternal grandmother was German and his maternal grandmother was English. Gates was an active member of a Boy Scout troop for several years, and earned the Eagle Scout Award in 1944. After high school he enlisted in the United States Army, changing his name to William Gates, Jr. to avoid the appearance of elitism. He fought in World War II and was honorably discharged in November 1946.
He attended the University of Washington (UW) under the G.I. Bill, where he earned a B.A. in 1949 and a law degree in 1950. While at Washington he joined the Chi Psi Fraternity. He practiced law until 1998, primarily with the law firm which he co-founded as Shidler & King in 1964, later known as Preston Gates & Ellis LLP; the firm was merged into the firm now known as K&L Gates, although Bill Gates, Sr. is not affiliated with the firm. Gates also served on the board of Planned Parenthood.
In 1998, Gates retired from PGE. He currently serves on the Board of Regents for the University of Washington, and is a co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which his son Bill and his son's wife Melinda founded. He has served as a director for Costco Wholesale, a bulk retail corporation, since 2003. He is also a founding co-chair of the Pacific Health Summit. He has adopted the suffix "Sr." to distinguish himself from his more famous son.
Gates is co-author, with Chuck Collins, of the book Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes, a defense of the policies promoted by the estate tax.
He married Mary Maxwell Gates, whom he met at UW, and who died in 1994. They had three children: Kristianne, Bill, and Libby. In 1996 Gates married Mimi Gardner Gates, who was director of the Seattle Art Museum.
William H. Gates, Sr. serves as an Honorary Co-Chair for the World Justice Project. The World Justice Project works to lead a global, multidisciplinary effort to strengthen the Rule of Law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity.

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Ctl + Alt + Delete was a mistake

If you pressed Control-Alt-Delete to log on before reading this, Bill Gates says he's sorry.

The Microsoft founder says the triple-key login should have been made easier, à la Apple's Macs, but that a designer insisted on the more complicated step.

"We could have had a single button. But the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn't want to give us our single button," Gates admitted once.

"And so we had ... we programmed at a low level that you had to ... it was a mistake," he said, throwing up his hands to laughter and applause from the crowd.

Gates defended innovation on the earliest Microsoft software though.

"We did some clever stuff," he said. "We were able to experiment with a lot of stuff, but more on the software side than the hardware."

Long the first interface step for PC users, Control-Alt-Delete still exists in Windows 8 as a way of either locking the computer or accessing the control panel. While the system defaults to a log-in screen, users may tweak their settings to return to the old way of logging on to Windows.

Sometimes informally called the "three-fingered salute," the login required users to use both hands and was intended to avoid accidental keystrokes from rebooting a computer.

Engineer David Bradley, a designer on early IBM computers, said he invented the combination as a shortcut during development.

"I originally intended for it to be what we would now call an Easter egg -- just something we were using in development and it wouldn't be available elsewhere," Bradley said while appearing on a 2011 panel that included Gates. "But then (software publishers) found out about it. They were trying to figure out how to tell somebody to start up one of their programs, and they had the answer. Just put the diskette in, hit Control-Alt-Delete, and by magic your program starts."

He then tried to deflect what he perhaps wryly called "credit" for its continued use.

"It was like a five-minute job in doing it. I didn't realize that I was going to create a cultural icon when I did it," he said "... I may have invented it, but I think Bill made it famous."

A tight-lipped Gates appears to force a smile in a video of the panel but does not respond.

Gates attended Harvard until he left during his junior year to start Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975. While at Harvard, he lived down the hall from current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Gates received an honorary degree in 2007.

Gates remains Microsoft's chairman although he stopped full-time work at the company in 2008.

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