Passage 1 (P.128)
Scripts
Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955 in a family having a richbusiness, political and community service background. From childhood Bill wasintelligent and competitive. In school, he had excellent records in mathematicsand science. Still he was getting very bored in school and his parents knew it,so they always tried to feed him with more information to keep him busy. Bill’sparents came to know about their son’s intelligence and decided to send him toa private school, known for its serious academic environment. It was a veryimportant decision in Bill’s life, and it was there that he was introduced to acomputer. Bill Gates and his friends were very much interested in the world ofprogramming and formed the “Programmers Group” in late 1968. In the next year,they got their first opportunity in Information Sciences Inc. in which theywere selected as programmers. Bill and his close friend Allen developed a smallcomputer to measure traffic flow and they earned around $20,000 from thisproject. In 1973, he left home for Harvard University. He did well there, buthe didn’t find it interesting. He spent many long nights in front of theschool’s computer and the next day was asleep in class. Bill and his friendAllen remained in close contact even though Allen was away in Washington StateUniversity. They would often discuss new ideas for future projects and thepossibility of starting a business one day. At the end of Bill’s first year,Allen moved closer to him so that they could follow some of their ideas. Withina year, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, and then formed Microsoft withAllen.
Almost 70 years ago the idea of disabled people doing sports was neverheard of. But when the annual games for the disabled were started in England in1948 by Sir Ludwig Guttmann, the situation began to change.
Sir Ludwig Guttmann, who left Germany because of the Nazi persecutionof the Jews, was asked by the British government to set up an injuries centerat Stoke Mandeville Hospital near London in 1943. His methods for treatinginjuries included sports for the disabled.
In the first games just two teams of injured soldiers took part. Thenext year, 1949, five teams took part. From those beginnings, things havedeveloped fast. In 1960 the first Paralympic Games were held in Rome, in thesame place as the normal Olympic Games. Since then, the Paralympic Games havetaken place in the same year as the Olympic Games. The 1988 Summer Paralympicsin Seoul was a landmark for the Paralympic movement. It was in Seoul that theSummer Paralympic Games were held directly after the Summer Olympic Games, inthe same host city and using the same facilities. This set a precedent and waseventually formalized in an agreement between the International ParalympicCommittee and the International Olympic Committee in 2001.
The Paralympic Games have been a great success in promotinginternational friendship and understanding, and in proving that being disableddoes not mean you can?t enjoy sports. One small source of disappointment forthose who organize and take part in the Paralympic Games, however, has been theunwillingness of the International Olympic Committee to include disabled eventsin the Olympic Games for the able-bodied. Perhaps a few more years are stillneeded to convince those fortunate enough not to be disabled that theirdisabled fellow athletes should not be excluded.
Q1: What was Sir Ludwig Guttmann?s greatest contribution to thedisabled?
Q2: When were the first Paralympic Games held?
Q3: What was special about the 1988 Seoul Paralympic Games?
Q4: What do we know about the Paralympic Games from the passage?
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