Bill Gates was called ‘retarded’ at age of nine and told to stay back a year in class, reveals astonishing new memoir by one of the world’s richest and most successful tech pioneers

BOOK OF THE WEEK 

Source Code by Bill Gates (Allen Lane £25, 336pp)

When Bill Gates was nine, a therapist said he was ‘retarded’. He wasn’t bad at his lessons. It was his voice – he was squeaky.

She recommended he be held back a year while she taught him how to develop a ‘big daddy-bear voice’. She made him pronounce the letter ‘r’ as he licked peanut butter off a bread stick.

Just over a decade later, Gates had co-founded Microsoft, got into every university he applied to (except Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but then only because he couldn’t be bothered to go to the interview) and was hurrying on to become the world’s richest man.

Source Code is a good title for this gentle, pensive autobiography. Gates likes the idea of self-digitalisation. He marks even that early act of therapeutic child abuse as useful because it added a bit to his thirst for independent thinking, which would later prove so useful to him.

Another teacher, spotting a glimmer of the…

More

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Bill Gates was called 'retarded' at age of nine and told to stay back a year in class, reveals astonishing new memoir by one of the world's richest and most successful tech pioneers

 

Log In

Or with username:

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.