The next big breakthrough began in 1989 when the first version of Word for Windows was released for $498 USD (equivalent to approximately £819 in 2020 with adjusted inflation rates). The next four editions - Word 1.1 for DOS in 1984 through Word 4.0 for DOS in 1987 - each included minor improvements but nothing revolutionary. Word 1.0 had plenty of kinks that needed to be worked out, but it served as a solid foundation to build upon in future editions. Word 1.0 could run in graphics and text mode, but bold, italics, and underline features were only available in the text mode. In 1983, Microsoft launched Word 1.0 in "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) mode for Xenix and MS-DOS. Simonyi and Brodie worked tirelessly - aiming to develop the world's best word processing tool to date.
In 1981, their search led them to Charles Simonyi and Richard Brodie, two Xerox Bravo programmers who were instrumental in building Xerox's original word processing programme. Gates and Allen set out to hire the best programmers they could find. While many secretaries were typing wizards with near 100% accuracy, the prospect of one mistyped key requiring typists to restart the page from scratch significantly impeded word processing efficiency. Just a small handful of forward-thinking computer programmers were bold enough to dream of personal computers with word processing capabilities. With big dreams and little funding, they started in Albuquerque, New Mexico before moving their headquarters up to their hometown of Bellevue, Washington in 1979.Īt the time, electric typewriters were the most state-of-the-art word processing tool.
In 1975, childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded a small computer software company called "Micro-Soft" (it took them a few years to slash the hyphen). Microsoft Word's ascent from a far-off concept to the most popular word processing programme in the world was similarly improbable. Most successful tech innovations over the course of history start from humble beginnings.