Reporter:Were other of your contemporaries equally interested in the business, or did you find yourself unusual among the groups?
记者：你周围的同龄人也同样对商业感 兴趣吗？还是你与众不同？
Gates: Well，when I went to Lakeside School, I was about 12 years old. I started there in seventh grade. That was kind of a change for me. It is a private boys’ school. Very strict. At first I really didn’t like the I did eventually find some friends there, some of who had the same sort of interest, like reading business magazines and Fortune. We were always creating funny company names and having people send us their ir .[Laughs] Trying to think about how business worked. And in particular, looking at computer companies and what was going on with them.
盖茨：嗯，我12岁的时候进入湖滨中 学学习。我从七年级开始读。那对我来 说是一个新的环境。湖滨中学是一所私 立男校，管理非常严格。开始的时候， 我真的不喜欢那种环境。后来，我交到 了 一群好朋友，其中的一些跟我有同 样的爱好，比如阅读商业杂志或者《财 富》。我们经常起一些有趣的公司名字， 让别人给我们发他们的产品资料（笑 声）。我们总是思考商业是如何运行的， 而且特别关注一些电脑公司的发展经营 状况。
Reporter: What companies, in particular, did you like to follow?
记者：你们会特别关注哪些公司？
Gates: The first computer we used was a GE time-sharing system. It was connected over a phone line. Actually, the school couldn’t afford a full phone line, so someone in the offices had a switch where you could take over the phone line. It was an ASR-33 Teletype with paper tape connected up to a GE computer. But, very quickly，we found out about PDP-8s, and eventually got one loaned to us. And then eventually, Data General Nova got loaned to us. So, it these companies making smaller computers that were very fascinating to us. Joining all the user groups. DEC had one called the DECUS User Group. Getting on every mailing list. In Datamation they had these bingo cards where you could check everything you were interested in. So, we just put our name down and checked everything in there and tried to learn about the world of computing.
盖茨：我们用的第一台电脑采用的是 GE分时系统。它通过一条电话线连接。 事实上，学校并不能给我们提供一根独 立的电话线，因此，需要在办公室里通 过终端机转换。那是一台ASR-33型号 的终端机，通过纸带接到一台GE电脑 上。但是，很快我们发现了 PDP-8S，并 最终租到了一台。最终我们租用了通用 数据公司的新星开发操 作系统。所以，主要是 这些制造小型计算机的 公司吸引我们。我们加 入到使用者的行列中。 DEC有一个叫DECUS 的用户群。把自己的电 子邮件地址加入到他们 的电邮数据库中，他们 会通过数据库自动发送各种宾戈卡片， 你可以由此找到自己感兴趣的东西。因 此，我们填上姓名，选择全部选项，我 们想了解整个计算机世界。
Reporter: How did the faculty respond to your interest outside of your curriculum compared to your interest in your own studies?
记者：相比你的学习生活而言，老师们 对你的课余爱好怎么看？
Gates: Well, I was relieved from some classes, Math in particular, because I’d read ahead. So, I had quite a bit of free time. When the Mother’s Club which did this rummage sale, got the money for this Teletype and a certain amount of time to buy computer time, it was a question of who was going to figure this thing out? Now, I was very young. I was in eighth grade and some of the older students kind of barged in and thought they could figure it out. And very quickly, the teachers were intimidated. So, it was sort of a group of students reading the manuals and trying things out. You would type the programs off-line on this yellow paper tape and then put it into the tape reader, dial up the computer, and very quickly feed in the paper tape and run your program. They charged you not only for the connect time， but also for storage units and CPU time. So, if you had a program that had a loop in it of some type you could spend a lot of money very quickly. And so we went through the money that the Mother’s Club had given very rapidly. It was a little awkward for the teachers, because it was just students sitting there and zoom—the money was gone. I wrote a tic-tac-toe program and a couple of other base conversion programs. It was the BASIC language running on this GE system. So, people didn’t know what to think because teachers were fairly dignified in those days and usually were supposed to know what was going on. They were okay about it, but then when the money was start billing us for all of our usage. We funny student checking accounts so my stayed very active. We were kind of desperate to get free computer time one way or another. The amount of time we’d spend in this particular room that had the Teletype was quite extreme. We sort of took over the room, myself and two other people. They called it the Teletype Room. We were always coming up with schemes to get free computer time, and eventually did with a local company. Convinced them that because they had a deal with DEC for this big computer, an early PDP-10, serial number 36，that if they could find problems with it they wouldn’t have to pay their rent. Having a few of the students, including me, bang on it and try to find bugs seemed like a good idea. And particularly, let us do that mostly at night. So, we were going down to this... it was called Computer Center Corporation, C-Cubed，in the University District, staffed by some old people from the University of Washington Academic Computing Center had gone over there. So，for a few years that is where I spent my time. I’d skip out on athletics and go down to this computer center. We were moving ahead very rapidly: BASIC, FORTRAN, LISP, PDP-10 machine language, digging out the operating system listings from the trash and studying those. Really not just banging away to find bugs like monkeys [laughs], but actually studying the code to see what was wrong. The teachers thought we were quite unusual. And pretty quickly there were four of us who got more addicted, more involved, and understood it better than the others. Andthose were myself, Paul Allen, who later founded Microsoft with me, Ric Weiland, who actually worked at Microsoft in the early days, and Kent Evans, who was my closest friend, and most my age, was killed in a mountain climbing accident when I was in 11th grade in high school. So, the four of us became the Lakeside Programming Group.
盖茨：嗯，有一些课我可以不去上，尤 其是数学，因为我之前已经会了。所以 我有很多时间可以自己支配。当母亲倶 乐部通过义卖筹集到钱来支付终端机和 电脑使用时间的费用时，这时出现问题 该由谁来解决呢？那时候我很小，才读 八年级。一些高年级的学生介入并认为 他们可以解决。很快，老师们的地位受 到了威胁。一群学生读了手册，又进行 了试验。你可以离线在这个黄色纸带上 编程，之后把它放在读带机上，用电脑拨号，很快就可以输入纸带上的程序并 运行。这个过程中，不仅仅有连接的时 间，同时还需要储存单元和中央处理器 运行的时间。因此，如果你开发了这样 一个程序，它将很快消耗掉大笔费用。 母亲俱乐部不断地给我们运作经费。这 样的局面让老师们或多或少也有一些尴 尬，因为只是一群学生坐在那里不断地 发出嗡嗡声，钱就花没了。我写过一 个“一字棋”的游戏程序，还有两个 其他基础转换程序。在GE系统里运行 BASIC语言。因为那时老师 毫无疑问是高高在上的，通 常情况下，大家都认为他们 应该知道接下来应该发生什 么，但那时他们都不知该如 何打算。他们并不反对我们 的行为，但是当钱很快被花 光的时候，他们开始要求我 们付费。有趣的是，我们认 识一些对账的学生，所以我和伙伴们总 还是能找到电脑用的。我们总是想尽各 种办法免费使用电脑。我们在有终端机 的机房里度过了很多时间。我和另外两 个人几乎接管了这个房间。他们称这个 房间为终端机房。我们经常想办法免费 使用计算机，最终找到了一家当地的公 司。他们与DEC签订了一个关于大型 计算机的合约，早期的PDP-10，序列 号36。协议中说如果这个公司可以找 到电脑中存在的一些问题，则无需付租 金。对一些学生，包括我来说，真是正 中下怀。努力找出电脑中的程序错误看起来是个不错的想法。并且 我们的工作时间多集中在晚 上。于是我们达成了协议 ……那家公司名叫计算机中 心股份公司，C的立方，就 在大学区，工作人员是一些 华盛顿学术计算机中心的老 员工。可以说，我在那儿度 过了几年时间。我放弃了 各种运动，专注于这个计 算机中心。我们进步很快： BASIC、FORTRAN、LISP、PDP-10 计 算机语言，从一堆“杂物”中找出有用 的操作系统表格并学习。真的，我们 做的不仅仅是像猴子一样努力地找出 那些漏洞（笑声），我们通常会研究代 码，看看到底是哪些地方出了问题。老 师们觉得我们与众不同。很快，我们中 的4人更加投入，更加痴迷于此，并 且比别人理解得更透彻。这4个人是： 我，保罗艾伦（后来我们一起创立了 微软），里克韦兰德（开始的时候他也 在微软工作），肯特伊万斯（他是我最 亲密的好朋友），我们年纪相仿，在我 读高中11年级的时候，他在一次爬山 时遇到了意外，去世了。因此，是我们 4个建立了湖滨程序小组。
Reporter: Clearly, your extracurricular activity was probably more important in your later development than what you did in class, or at least equal! important [Gates Laughs]. How do you feel as we look at problems in education, that students that are coming up interested in technical things should balance those. Do you think it is important to explore things on your own at that age?
记者：显然，与课上学到的知识相比， 你课外的这些活动对日后的发展更有帮 助，至少是一样重要的（盖茨笑）。现 在的教育中也存在一些问题，很多学生 对技术方面的东西更感兴趣，认为应将 其与课堂上的知识平衡，你对此怎么 看？你觉得自我探索对于那个年龄段的 人来说很重要吗？
Gates: Self-exploration is great, because you develop a sense of self-confidence and an identity of “Hey, I know this pretty well. I know this better than the teachers. Let me try and see if I can understand at the next level. Maybe I’m pretty good at this stuff.” And particularly with the computer where if your program is wrong, you know you try it and if it doesn’t work and then you fix it and try it again. It is kind of a feedback loop，which because the classroom has a lot of people, and maybe there is not a subject that you think you are good at or interested at. It is just fascinating to try and figure out the computer. I remember at Computer Center Corporation they had hired in some of the great people of early computer days, including Bob Gruen, Dick Russell, a guy named Weir who was a Stanford guy. Anyway，these guys would kind of loan us deep manuals on the system, just for a few hours and then take them away. So, we’d spend those few hours just reading carefully. It was so exciting to get a little glimpse and beginning to figure out how computers were built, and why they were expensive. I certainly think that having some dimension, when you’re young, that you feel a mastery of, versus the other people around you is a very positive thing. And for me that came in several ways: the reading I was doing non-computer related; in Math. But computers, timewise, for many years was a key center of excitement.
盖茨：自我探索很重要，因为在这个过 程中你可以培养自信心和一种S我认 同：“嘿，我很擅长这个。对于这个问 题我比老师懂得还多。我要试试我是不 是可以做得更进一步。或许我有这方面 的天赋。”对于计算机来讲，如果你的 程序出现了错误，你尝试了之后就会发 现是哪里错了，为什么不能正常运行， 然后你就可以进行修复，再运行。这就 类似于一个反馈的过程，一个教室里有 很多人，或许你对任何一门科目都不擅 长，或是不感兴趣。只有计算机才对你 充满吸引力。我记得在计 算机中心股份公司的时 候，他们雇用了早期一些 很有名的人，包括鲍博 格伦，迪克罗素，还 有一个斯坦福大学的威 尔。总而言之，这些人只 把系统的详细操作手册借 给我们看几个小时，然后 便拿走了。因此，这几个 小时，我们就仔细地读。 这惊鸿一瞥很让人兴奋，看了这些知识 让我们知道了计算机是如何建立起来 的，为什么那么贵。当然，我认为年轻 人跟其他人相比，在某方面是有一定的 竞争优势的。于我而言，这体现在很多 方面：我正在做一些与计算机无关的阅 读，数学。但是，这么多年来，计算机 一直是我最感兴趣的东西。
Reporter： We are going to talk a little bit about your transition into Harvard before you got to the Altair. You mentioned that even though you worked in computing, that it wasn’t your goal when you went to college. Do you want to say what your goal was?
记者：在谈“牛郎星”之前，我们先来 谈谈你在哈佛大学的经历。你之前提到，即使在计算机行业工作，也并不是 你进入大学时的目标。可以说说你那时 的目标吗？
Gates: That’s right. I finished up at TRW, went back, and graduated from Lakeside School. I picked out of the schools I’d been accepted to, to go back to Harvard. They seemed to have a lot of different things. I knew that if I wanted to be a Lawyer or a Mathematician, Harvard had good courses for these things. Once I got there, I thought Economics was pretty interesting. And I felt that I understood computers well enough, that I really didn’t need to hang out with a computer crowd there, because they weren’t as interesting. I did end up taking a few computer courses. But most of what I did was not related to computers. And meanwhile, Paul Allen, who had worked with me on everything, basically [chuckles], and who shared this idea that we should go do a company —he actually tried to convince me after TRW that we should start a company then, and try to build PDP-8-like systems around 8080 chips But it just was too vague and my parents wanted me to go back to school. So, I went back there. But Paul was there and we were always talking about, “Could we stick a lot of microprocessors together to do something powerful? Could we do a 360 emulator using micro controllers? Could we do a time-sharing system where lots of people could dial-in and get consumer information?” A lot of different ideas.
盖茨：是的。我结束了在TRW的工作 回去之后，从湖滨中学毕业。我没有去 录取了我的学校，而是回到了哈佛大学， 他们似乎有很多与众不同的地方。我知 道，如果我想做一名律师或者数学家， 哈佛大学的课程再好不过了。我一到那 儿，就觉得经济学很有趣。并且，我觉 得自己的计算机已经学得很好了，完全 不需要和那里的一群人在一起研究，因 为没什么意思。最终我只选了几门计算 机课程。但是，我所选的大部分与计算 机无关。同时还有保罗艾伦，我们基 本上做什么都在一起（轻声笑），他建议 我们一起创办一个公司——事实上，离 开TRW以后他就这样说服我，希望建立 一个像PDP-8 —样包含8080个芯片的系 统，大约8080个芯片。但那只是一个很 模糊的概念，并且我的父母要求我回去 上学。所以，我就回去了。但是，保罗 在那儿，我们还经常一起讨论：“我们是 不是可以把许多微处理器集中起来，让 它的功能更强大？我们是不是可以用微 控制器做一个360仿真器？我们能不能做 一个分时系统，让很多用户可以同时上线 并获取信息？ ”等很多新奇的想法。