The History Of Windows
...for their share of the professional and private computer market. There have been hundreds of operating systems produced over the years, most of them were not able to maintain a solid customer base, and became extinct. There are a few, however, that have eclipsed the computer world. There is a definite line between consumers for the three most popular operating systems, UNIX, Macintosh, and Windows. Microsoft, who produced Windows, gained wide public support almost from the beginning, leading to a near monopolization of the computer software industry. Here is a history of the Windows operating system as it was introduced back in 1985.
One of the earliest operating systems for the personal computer was Windows, produced by Microsoft. The first version of the operating system was released on November 20th, 1985 (Microsoft Windows History, 2008), under the name of Windows 1.0. Originally, Microsoft wanted to call the pioneer operating system “Interface Manager” describing its multi-tasking abilities, but Rowland Hanson, the head of marketing at Microsoft, wanted to go with a name that would be more appealing to consumers. Thus the “Windows” title was born. Version 1.0 of Windows was not actually a complete operating system, but rather an extension of MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) that gave customers a graphical user interface to simplify executing applications and documents. In the first version of Windows, all device drivers came loaded with the operating system, and applications could use only these pre-loaded drivers. Microsoft was always looking forward into the future, and wanted to develop technology that could be used for subsequent operating systems as well. As such, Windows 1.0 was the first program to develop and utilize ‘virtual memory’, a software based scheme that would allow for larger applications than the current available...
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