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 Gates Sr. Bill Gates Sr. William Henry Gates II (born November 30, 1925), better known as Bill Gates Sr., is an American retired 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 co-founder Bill Gates. One of a line of businessmen named William H. Gates, and sometimes called William Gates Jr. in his career, he is now generally known as William Henry Gates Sr. due to the greater prominence of his son William H. Gates III (Bill Gates). Gates was born in 1925 in Bremerton, Washington,