Redmond is a city in King County, Washington, United States, located 16 miles (26 km) east of Seattle. The population was 54,144 at the 2010 census, up from 45,256 in 2000.

Redmond is best known as the home of Microsoft (for which Redmond has become a metonym) and Nintendo of America.

With an annual bike race on city streets and the state's only velodrome, Redmond is also known as "the bicycle capital of the Northwest". However, its main form of transportation is the automobile (2000 Census). The city is predominantly suburban in character.

Redmond has a historic downtown with many individually owned businesses, adjacent to the modern downtown Redmond.^{[citation needed]}

Due to its large population of highly paid technology workers, especially those of Microsoft, Redmond is an affluent community. Based on per capita income, Redmond ranks 20th of the 522 areas in the state of Washington to be ranked.

Native Americans had settled in the Redmond area 400 years ago,^{[citation needed]} and the first European settlers arrived in the 1870s. Luke McRedmond filed a Homestead Act claim for land next to the Sammamish Slough on September 9, 1870, and the following year Warren Perrigo took up land adjacent to him. The rivers and streams had so many salmon that the settlement was initially named Salmonberg. More settlers came, and with the establishment of the first post office in 1881, the name of the community was changed to Melrose. The new name was taken from the Perrigos' successful inn, Melrose House, which upset McRedmond. After becoming postmaster, he successfully petitioned to have the name changed to Redmond in 1883.

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington) is an American business magnate, computer programmer and philanthropist. Gates is the former chief executive officer (CEO) and current chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company he co-founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third; in 2011 he was the wealthiest American and the second wealthiest person. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with 6.4 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

Frank Lloyd Wright (born Frank Lincoln Wright, June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was best exemplified by his design for Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture". Wright was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture and developed the concept of the Usonian home, his unique vision for urban planning in the United States.

His work includes original and innovative examples of many different building types, including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright also designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass. Wright authored 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. His colorful personal life often made headlines, most notably for the 1914 fire and murders at his Taliesin studio. Already well known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time."

Frank Lloyd (2 February 1886, Glasgow, UK – 10 August 1960, Santa Monica, California, United States) was a film director, scriptwriter and producer. Lloyd was among the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and its president between 1934 and 1935.

Frank Lloyd was Scotland's first Academy Award winner and is unique in film history having received three Oscar nominations in 1929 for his work on a silent film (The Divine Lady), a part-talkie (Weary River) and a full talkie (Drag). He won for The Divine Lady. He was nominated and won again in 1933 for his adaptation of Noël Coward's Cavalcade and received a further Best Director nomination in 1935 for perhaps his most successful film, Mutiny on the Bounty.

In 1957, Lloyd was awarded The George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr. (March 30, 1890, Oak Park, Illinois – May 31, 1978, Santa Monica, California), commonly known as Lloyd Wright, was an American landscape architect and architect, active primarily in Los Angeles and Southern California. His name is frequently confused with that of his more famous father, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Lloyd Wright's mother was Frank Lloyd Wright's first wife, Catherine Lee "Kitty" Tobin. He was the eldest son of the couple, and grew up in the surroundings of the 1889 Wright home and studio in Oak Park. Lloyd briefly attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison, before leaving for a job at the Boston-based landscape architecture firm of the Olmsted Brothers. Specializing in botany and horticulture, he continued to pursue the interrelation of landscape and buildings through his life.

He settled in Southern California around 1911, followed by his younger brother John Lloyd Wright. The Olmsteds had sent him to assist with the landscape design of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego with architects Irving Gill, Bertram Goodhue, and Carleton Winslow. The exposition's principal buildings and gardens still remain in Balboa Park. Landscape design led him to work with Los Angeles architect William J. Dodd and in San Diego with Irving Gill, the latter another master architect and mentor to his design career.