Bill Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen, and he joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. The MITS Altair 8800 was released the following year. The new computer was based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company. Gates dropped out of Harvard at this time. He had talked over this decision with his parents, who were supportive of him after seeing how much their son wanted to start his own company. Gates explained his decision to leave Harvard, saying "...if things [Microsoft] hadn't worked out,
Bill Graham (Canadian politician) and Vancouver, British Columbia, in a wealthy family; his father, F.R. Graham, was a business magnate, and Bill is a product of the second marriages of both parents. He was educated at Upper Canada College, Trinity College at the University of Toronto, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (where he was an editor of the "Law Review" and the gold medalist of 1964), and the University of Paris As a student, he traveled in the Middle East and Europe. He married the former Catherine Curry in 1962, and they have a daughter, Katherine ("Katy", born in 1964) and a