35 Years Ago Today Microsoft Shipped Windows 1.0, And Changed The World Forever
The first Microsoft Windows was called Windows 1.0 and it was the first operating system with a graphical user interface and it was released 35 years ago, on November 20, 1985. I
When we think of the first computer we ever used, chances are it would have been a PC running some version of Microsoft Windows (unless you were lucky enough to have a Mac system).
I still remember the first Microsoft OS I ever used -- Windows 95.
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Although at the time I didn¡¯t know a lot about computers -- the only things I did was running games like Road Rash or Need For Speed II SE from the desktop shortcut. Even though this was the first OS I and many of us would have used, it wasn¡¯t the first Windows that Microsoft unveiled.
The first Microsoft Windows
The first Microsoft Windows was called Windows 1.0 and it was the first operating system with a graphical user interface and it was released 35 years ago, on November 20, 1985. In case you¡¯re wondering why this was such a big deal, well, PCs at the time weren¡¯t so user friendly and their UI often looked something like this:
Wikipedia
Windows 1.0 operating system was the first graphical UI system with a 16-bit shell on the classic MS-DOS. It stood to compete against Apple¡¯s Lisa operating system and it was touted to be designed for multitasking.
Windows were in a tile layout
Surprisingly, the Windows overlapping feature that we take for granted wasn¡¯t present on Windows 1.0. Instead, all the elements would stay on the screen like a tile, somewhat similar to the Windows Phone UI. The only boxes that were allowed to overlap these were dialog boxes (the ones where you have to select ¡®yes¡¯ or ¡®no¡¯, or just ¡®ok¡¯).
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The software included limited applications like Calculator, Calendar, Cardfile, Clipboard Viewer, Clock, Control Panel, Notepad, Paint, Reversi, Terminal and Write. However each one of these made users try out the mouse, which surely was a revolutionary way of input that we continue to use to this day, at the time it wasn¡¯t received that well with its users.
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Sadly it wasn't as successful as you'd thought it'd be. Microsoft eventually ceased support for the OS in the year 2001.
Windows made Microsoft a giant of the technology world and Bill Gates the richest person in the world by the late 1990s.
