Microsoft Word is 40 years old today! Back on 25 October 1983, the first Word was released into the wild. Here’s a look at what was tech innovation back when “Every Breath You Take” was the latest pop sensation.
Originally called “Multi-Tool Word”, it later renamed “Microsoft Word” or as we’d call it now “Microsoft Word for DOS“.
What made Word for DOS interesting was the mouse support (an innovation back then). It was given away as part of a PC World promotion (on floppy disks, no CD’s yet).
Early Word for DOS ‘boasted’ 640 x 200 resolution monochrome support.
Even back then, Microsoft oversold their products (some things never change).
They said Word for DOS was “WYSIWYG” (What You See Is What You Get). As you can see, that’s only true if you really stretch the definition of “WYSIWYG”.
Multiple fonts were available but they didn’t appear on the screen. Many, many trees were wasted back then because you printed out page to see how they looked, dumped the paper in the trash and tried again.
It could show more than one document at the same time. Any kind of multitasking was a big deal in 1983. Mind you, the small screen meant it was hard to see multiple documents properly.
Word for Windows came six years later (Winword is a mere 33 years old) bundled with Windows.
