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Inventors of the Modern Computer
Windows
Microsoft
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 On
November 10, 1983, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, Microsoft Corporation
formally announced Microsoft Windows, a next-generation operating system
that would provide a graphical user interface (GUI) and multitasking environment
for IBM computers. Microsoft promised that the new program would be on
the shelf by April 1984. It might have been released under the original
name of Interface Manager if Microsoft's marketing whiz, Rowland Hanson,
had not convinced Microsoft founder Bill
Gates that Windows was the better name.
That
same November, Bill Gates showed a beta version of Windows to IBM's head
honchos. Their response was lackluster, perhaps because IBM was also working
on its own product called Top View. They did not give Microsoft the same
encouragement for Windows that they gave MS-DOS
in 1981, the first highly successful operating system that Microsoft wrote
for the IBM-PC.
Top
View was released in February 1985, as a DOS-based multitasking program
manager without any GUI features. IBM promised that future versions of
Top View would have a GUI. The promise was never kept, and the program
was discontinued barely two years later.
No
doubt, Bill Gates realized how profitable a successful GUI for IBM computers
would be. He had seen Apple's Lisa
computer and later the more successful
Macintosh
computer. Both Apple computers came with a stunning graphical user
interface.
Side Note: Early MS-DOS diehards liked to refer to MacOS
as 'WIMP' - the Windows, Icons, Mice and Pointers interface.
Microsoft's
Windows faced potential competition from IBM's own Top View, and there
were others. VisiCorp's short-lived VisiOn, released in October 1983, was
the official first PC-based GUI. The second was GEM (Graphics Environment
Manager), released by Digital Research in early 1985. Both GEM and VisiOn
lacked support from the all-important third-party developers--and, if nobody
wanted to write software programs for an operating system, nobody would
want to buy it.
Microsoft
finally shipped Windows 1.0 on November 20, 1985, almost two years past
the initially promised release date.
Continue...
all artwork ©MaryBellis
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