Bill Gates with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico. Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies. Microsoft's Altair BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked into the community and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter in which he asserted that more than 90 percent of the users of Microsoft Altair BASIC had not paid Microsoft for it and by doing so the Altair "hobby market" was in danger of eliminating the incentive for
Robert Franklin Gates commissions between 1937 and 1942, Gates also served as an instructor at the University of Florida, Hood College in Frederick, MD, the Washington County Museum of Art in Hagerstown, MD, and the Phillips Gallery Art School in Washington, D.C., where his wife Margaret worked as a secretary. Gates served in World War II as a civilian technician with the U.S. Navy. He made models and designed camouflage patterns. After the war, he studied under Bill Calfee at American University. He joined the faculty there in 1946. Gates worked as the Artist-in-Residence at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq from 1966-1967.