We previously talked about the WordStar word processor and its dominance of the market in the early '80s. Once the utility of such tools was confirmed, several companies sought a piece of the pie, and not surprisingly, Microsoft was part of that competition. The first shot fired from Bellevue (it wasn't Redmond yet) was called Word, and for its development, Bill Gates turned to the fountainhead of graphical applications: Xerox PARC.
In other words, Gates hired Charles Simonyi and Richard Brodie, two of Xerox's masterminds who worked on the Bravo software for the Xerox Alto computer in 1974. Bravo was a "document preparation program" and the first of its kind to implement what we now know as the WYSIWYG system, "What you see is what you get." The future was brewing at Xerox PARC, and the Alto, as a research and development system, taught us the full potential of graphical applications.
Bravo gave rise to its successor, Gypsy, but both remained relatively on the sidelines of the natural evolution of 'homegrown' processors like Electric Pencil. After all, they were destined for completely different platforms; however, the genie of WYSIWYG had already escaped the lamp. WordStar followed that philosophy (to a certain extent), and the only option for Microsoft was to enter the same ring. The result? Word 1.0.
Word 1.0: A Word Processor, a Mouse, an Idea
The first version hit the shelves in October 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word , designed specifically for Xenix systems, but the MS-DOS compatible port didn't take long to appear. Microsoft had decided to adopt a double strategy for promoting Word. On one hand, the goal was to attack WordStar and its limited WYSIWYG support: the letters on screen were bold, italic, and underlined, instead of being trapped between special brackets. And on the other hand, Word had mouse support, a 'little bug' that accompanied the software to help us copy, move, and edit text faster.
But beyond these apparent advantages, the DOS editions of Word never gained traction, especially the first one. Its interface was very different from WordStar and the rest of its competitors. Some design decisions didn't make much sense, for example, hiding the option to save documents in a menu called Transfer. And the official documentation didn't make things clearer: the manual was close to 450 pages, even larger than WordStar's. The use of the mouse provided a much more fluid and dynamic experience overall, but we must not forget that it was a new concept for users in 1983.
Piracy was a very important factor in WordStar's popularity, but Microsoft went to incredible lengths to limit the proliferation of illegal copies of Word. The article on the ToastyTech portal dedicated to Word 1.x has an entire chapter focused on copy protections, including a mechanism that limited installations on hard drives to one per set of diskettes. If the hard drive failed and the user had no backups, the only solution was to buy another copy of Word.
Even with all these difficulties, Microsoft never gave up, and found itself developing four different lines of Word: the original for MS-DOS, another for the Apple Macintosh, another compatible with the 'new' Microsoft Windows, and a special build for Atari ST systems, with the alternative name Microsoft Write, which never received an update. The unification of version numbers came in 1993, when Microsoft released Word 6.0 for DOS, Word 6.0 for Mac (a nightmare, apparently; you can read an excellent article about its development problems here), and Word 6.0 for Windows.
What if I want it on Windows?
Today I have an alternative to that question: 'What if I want it free on Windows?' The first version of Word compatible with Windows cost $498 in 1989, almost $1,200 adjusted for inflation. Today, the truth is that Word is a couple of clicks away, and you only need a compatible Microsoft account. All documents are saved in its cloud, but the system allows us to download local copies to continue editing offline, without major restrictions. Another possibility is to use the mobile builds compatible with iOS and Android, though the idea of writing in a word processor with a touch screen is a bit strange. Finally, the Office Insider program enables access to the full suite, as long as you accept development versions.
In summary, Word's path has been very long, starting as a new competitor with an identity crisis, to becoming a de facto standard adopted by hundreds of millions of users. Is the future of Word a definitive conversion to software as a service, or will we continue to have independent and local builds? Everything seems to indicate that the former will happen.
