Exactly 40 years ago, on October 25, 1983, the first version of Microsoft’s word processor was released. Back then it was called Multi-Tool Word, but before the end of the year it was renamed Microsoft Word. The program was available for MS-DOS and Xenix (Unix from Microsoft).
Windows were not yet on the market at that time, Word was not released for them until 1989. But Apple users were also waiting, because the Macintosh version was not available until 1985.
At the time, Microsoft entered a market dominated by WordPerfect and WordStar, but brought in the best people to help with development. He employed Charles Simonyi and his “apprentice” Richard Brodie. Both previously worked at Xerox, where they created the Bravo editor and its successor, BravoX, for the Alto computer. It was the first family of WYSIWYG tools for working with text that used formatting and had a mouse-controlled cursor.
Both found their way into the first Word. It also supported the mouse and offered a mode where formatting was visible as you typed. There was no need to work with a markup language like LaTeX.
Microsoft released new versions of Word almost every year with additional functions. It added support for higher resolutions, document revisions, macros, bookmarks/links, a better user interface with drop-down menus, or support for the still-used RTF format. In the beginning, Word was not very successful due to strong competition. It only shined in later versions with the advent of Windows, as the then-dominant WordPerfect was slow on the new system.
Word was sold as a stand-alone tool for more than ten years, but already in the summer of 1989, the first version of the Office package came with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Mail. Paradoxically, Office made its debut on Macintoshes, it came to Windows more than a year later and without an e-mail client.
PS: Nah PCjs.org you can try Dosov’s Word 1.10 in an online emulator. The screenshot in the article also comes from it.
2023-10-25 14:45:15
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