Early experience

Gatess early experiences with computers included debugging (eliminating errors from) programs for the Computer Center Corporations PDP 10, helping to computerize electric power grids for the Bonneville Power Administration, and founding with Allen a firm called Traf O Data while still in high school. Their small company earned them twenty thousand dollars in fees for analyzing local traffic patterns.While working with the Computer Centers PDP 10, Gates was responsible for what was probably the first computer virus, a program that copies itself into other programs and ruins data. Discovering that the machine was connected to a national network of computers called Cybernet, Gates invaded the network and installed a program on the main computer that sent itself to the rest of the networks computers, making it crash (became damaged). When Gates was found out, he was severely punished, and he kept away from computers for his entire junior year at Lakeside. Without the lure of computers, Gates made plans for college and law school in 1970. But by 1971 he was back helping Allen write a class scheduling program for their schools computer.