Microsoft Word Grows Up: Q&A: As Microsoft Corporate Vice President Peter Pathe prepares to retire, he discusses the lasting legacy of a product he’s overseen for more than a decade.

Interesting snapshot and interview 

With the release of Microsoft’s new generation of technologies in 2007 comes an interesting highlight about a venerable program. Microsoft Word for Windows, the flagship word-processing program so popular around the globe, is turning 18.

Word was originally the "Bravo" product, brought to Microsoft from IBM’s Palo Alto Research Center by Charles Simonyi in 1981. The following year, Microsoft officially launched Word's development team. When the first version was released in 1983, it was the first word-processing product to feature the “WYSIWYG” design philosophy that what appears on screen should appear in print. It was the first program to feature line breaks, bold-faced and italic fonts on screen, and typeset-quality printing.

Source: Microsoft Word Grows Up: Q&A: As Microsoft Corporate Vice President Peter Pathe prepares to retire, he discusses the lasting legacy of a product he’s overseen for more than a decade.