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Bill Gates, 18-year-old Harvard freshman, is looking for a job

Bill Gates, 18-year-old Harvard freshman, is looking for a job

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Bill Gates TED screengrab
Bill Gates TED screengrab

The event that saw Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen pose for a classic photo reenactment has turned up another gem from the pair's early history. Seattle's Living Computer Museum held a gathering last night for many of founder Paul Allen's friends and fellow technological luminaries, and it also managed to dig up Gates' and Allen's pre-Microsoft resumes.

At the time Gates was a freshman at Harvard; he said he'd be available from June 1974, would be happy to work "anywhere," and suggested a salary baseline of $15,000. Both Gates and Allen worked at Honeywell in the summer of 1974, before Gates dropped out of Harvard the following year to start Microsoft. Two decades later, Gates would be anointed the world's richest man.

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Also at the Living Computer Museum's event were noted figures such as Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Wi-Fi pioneer Vic Hayes, and Bob Frankston, who co-created VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet software.