Biography of Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk a South Africa born American entrepreneur who recently became the richest man on Earth. A business mogul, industrial designer and engineer.
Early Life
Born on 28th of June 1971 in Pretoria South Africa, by a South African father and a Canadian mother. In his early life at age 12 he became obsessed with computers and entrepreneurship, with this talent he created a video game and sold it to a computer magazine. In 1988 after obtaining a Canadian passport he left South Africa to the United States for greater economic opportunities.
Education
Musk attended Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario and in 1992 he was transferred to the University of Pennsylvania where he obtained his bachelor’s degree in Physics and Economics in 1997. In the process he later enrolled in graduate school in physics which he left after only two days because he felt that the internet has wider opportunities and potential than physics.
Inventions
In 1955 he founded a company called Zip2 that provided information and business directory to online newspapers, which was later bought by a computer manufacturer for $307 million. Musk then founded an online financial services company X.com, which specialized in the transfer of money online which is now termed PayPal, an online auction later bought by PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
In 2002 he founded Space Exploration Technologies( SpaceX) to make more affordable rockets because he wasn’t comfortable with the high cost of rocket launchers. In addition to being the CEO of SpaceX, Musk was also a chief designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon and Grasshopper. He also became one of the major founders of Tesla Motors because of his interest in the possibilities of electric cars. In 2003 musk proposed an alternate faster system called the Hyperloop, a pneumatic tube which has the capacity of carrying 28 passengers at a top speed of 760 miles(1220km) per hour nearly the speed of sound, and that the pods travelling 2 minutes on average he said that the system could accommodate six million people who travel the route almost every year.
Some of His messages and quotes
Elon Musk is a risk taker and an innovator and dares to take the risk and dream big. Further he has the ability to make it happen.
Elon musk said:I think it is possible for ordinary people to become extraordinary.
– “when something is important enough, you do it, even if the odds are not in your favour”
– ” Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternate is disaster”
– ” Failure is an option here. If things are not failing you are not innovative enough”