Bill Gates recently appeared in an Instagram video sharing an amusing childhood memory involving an experiment conducted with a cow lung during fourth grade. He is writing a memoir and so included the following anecdote in it, to be released shortly. The former Microsoft CEO recalled how he shocked his classmates and teacher by bringing the cow lung to school for a show-and-tell assignment.
So when I was in fourth grade, my teacher said, ‘Bring in something interesting for show and tell.'” He recalled, “I remember talking with my dad and I think he said, ‘We could go out to the slaughterhouse and get a cow lung’.”
The idea thrilled Gates enough to carry the lung home in a nice, wrapped paper with white wrapping; ‘the reactions from my fellow classmates’, as Gates put it, ‘ran from awe to revulsion’. He even confessed to have not even used gloves in the demonstration.
In the video, Gates demonstrated the experiment. He showed how the cow lung inflates and deflates as air passes through it. He also revealed that one of his classmates fainted during the demonstration. The teacher was impressed at first but quickly added, “That was great, but get that thing out of the class.”
Take a look at the clip:
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When my teacher said, ‘Bring something interesting’ for show and tell, I don’t think she expected a cow lung.” That is just one of many tales from his childhood that will make up the material for his memoir, Source Code, scheduled for publication in February. In addition to that early experience, Gates also details the beginnings of his Microsoft enterprise, which he cofounded in 1975, a year after leaving Harvard.
