Three pioneers have made landmark breakthroughs in computers: Chester Bell, David Packard, and Bill Gates. Bell began Digital Equipment Corporation where he worked on the programmable data processor series computers and oversaw the production of virtual address extension. David Packard was the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, a business style and formula for success that became the prototype for companies in Silicon Valley. H-P grew from a small garage and initial investment of $538 to sales of more than $31 billion and 105, 000 employees. Packard was active in numerous professional, educational, civic, and business organizations. He was also an environmentalist. Packard directed several business organizations as well as holding several prominent political positions. He served as Secretary of Defense of the United States under Nixon.

Bill Gates wields more personal wealth than any man in America. At 16 he wrote a payroll program that was his first real business deal but not his last. In 1973 Gates enrolled at Harvard and in 1974 he and his partner we

Gates was married on Jan. 1, 1994, to Melinda French Gates. The couple has two children: a daughter, Jennifer Katharine Gates, born in 1996; and a son, Rory John Gates, born in 1999 (Gates, Retrieved 16 Sep 00). Bill and Melinda Gates have endowed a foundation with more than $21 billion to support philanthropic initiatives in the areas of global health and learning, with the hope that as well into the 21st century, advances in these critical areas will be available for all people. To date, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $300 million to organizations working in global health; more than $300 million to improve learning opportunities, including the Gates Library Initiative to bring computers, Internet Access and training to public libraries in low-income communities in the United States and Canada; more than $54 million to community projects in the Pacific Northwest; and more than $29 million to special projects and annual giving campaigns (Gates, !

Manes, Stephen, and Paul Andrews. Gates, How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry.

Lowe, Janet. Bill Gates Speaks. John Wiley and Sons Inc, 1998

After the war Packard became responsible for the company's business, while Hewlett led its research and development efforts. Following a postwar slump in defense contracts, in 1947 Hewlett-Packard returned to the revenue levels of the war years and grew continuously thereafter through a strategy of product diversification. One of its most popular early products was a high-speed frequency counter that it introduced in 1951. It was used in the rapidly growing market of FM radio and television broadcast stations for precisely setting signal frequencies according to Federal Communications Commission regulations. Military sales during the Korean War also boosted company revenues (Packard, pg 4).

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Packard also played a prominent role in establishing the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a $55 million philanthropic project of the Packard family. He was chairman of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation, and chairman and president of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Packard was a trustee of the Herbert Hoover Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and The Hoover Institution. He was vice chairman of the California Nature Conservancy in 1983, and from 1983 to 1989, served as a director of the Wolf Trap Foundation, Vienna, Va., an organization devoted to the performing arts.

The PC has provided millions of workers with the tools to do their jobs better, empowered students to become lifelong learners, and enabled consumers to enjoy exciting new forms of information, communication and entertainment on the Internet. In fact, the Internet promotes openness and competition more than almost any other invention of the last 100 years (Gates, pg 7).

VAX was the most successful microcomputer design in history (until the arrival of the killer microcomputers in 1986). By staying on the cutting edge of technology Mr. Bell, and others like him, helped to propel the industry to where it is today (Bell, pg 3).

In 1985, Packard was appointed by former President Reagan to chair the Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management. He also was a member of The Trilateral Commission from 1973 to 1981. From 1975 to 1982, he was a member of the US-USSR Trade & Economic Council's committee on science and technology, and he chaired the U.S.-Japan Computer Advisory Council (Packard, pg 4).

David Packard attended the University of Stanford and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1934 and a master's degree in electrical engineering in 1939. During that time he worked as an engineer with the General Electric Company. But it was in 1938 that he formed a partnership with friend and Stanford classmate William R Hewlett. Hewlett-Packard's first product was a resistance-capacitance audio oscillator built for the Walt Disney Company for the m

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