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Editor’s Note The following timeline accompanies the main articles, “Origin of Word Processing for Personal : 1976-1985” and “Proliferation and Consolidation of Word Processing Software: 1985-1995” by Thomas J. (Tim) Bergin, which appear in the October-December 2006 issue of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. The timeline was omitted from the articles because of space constraints. Word Processing Timeline

Year Event

J..R. Licklider, “Man- Symbiosis,” published in IRE Trans. on 1960 Human Factors in Electronics, March 1960, pp. 4-11.

Douglas Englebart, Augmenting the Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework Summary Report, Stanford Research Institute, October 1962, 134pp. See also 1962 “The Augmented Knowledge Workshop” by Doug Englebart in A History of Personal Workstations, Adele Goldberg, ed., ACM Press, 1988, pp. 185-236.

Radio Electronics (magazine) publishes “How to Build a Personal , the Mark-8,” July 1974. For Jon Titus’s perspective on his creation, see http://www.his.com/~jlewczyk/adavie/mark8b.html.

Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) releases the Alto minicomputer

1974 Working at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) of the Corporation, and write the first WYSIWYG application, , a , on the Alto minicomputer. The Alto supported a graphical , used a bit-mapped display and allowed control of the cursor with a mouse.

Creative Computing (magazine) launched

Altair appears on cover of (January)

Dick Heiser opens the first retail store: The Computer Store, in Los Angeles 1975 Byte (magazine) launched

Paul Terrell opens the Byte Shop in Mountain View, California 1976 and Stephen Wozniak create the Apple computer in Job’s garage

Apple I (a kit) was offered for $666

Gary Kildall founds Intergalactic ; first sale of Control Program for (CP/M)

Electric Pencil offered for sale in December by Michael Shrayer Software. This is the first word processing package for a . It was developed by Michael Shrayer a frequent attendee at the Home Brew Computer Club in Menlo Park, California.

Tandy Corporation and Commodore offer computers with built-in monitors

Microsoft founded by and in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to create and sell language translators; their first sale was a BASIC 1977 for the MITS Altair.

Apple II is announced and establishes the benchmark for personal computers

April: first West Coast Computer Faire held

March: second West Coast Computer Faire held

August: WordMaster offered for $150 at PC Expo in New York

Seymour Rubinstein founds MicroPro International, in September

November: third West Coast Computer Faire held

Electric Pencil II released

1978 ’s first 16-bit processor, the 8086, debuts

Apple II offered for sale

John Draper develops EasyWriter for the Apple II; this is a clone of Electric Pencil; later chosen to be the word processing package for the IBM (in 1981)

Apple Writer created for the Apple II by Paul Lutus

Personal Computing (magazine) launched

1979 May: fourth West Coast Computer Faire: early version of WordStar demonstrated

June: WordStar offered for sale ($495 for the software; $40 for the manual)

September: Satellite Software International founded to market word processing software for the minicomputer IBM selects PC-DOS from as for its new PC; Microsoft later gets permission from IBM to sell the operating system under its own name, as “MS-DOS,” to other minicomputer manufacturers and users 1980 WordStar for the released

SSI introduces SSI*WP for Data General ($5,500)

IBM introduces the personal computer (IBM PC) in August ($3,995)

Xerox releases the Star, a commercial version of the minicomputer with a and mouse; at $40,000 it was a marketing failure

1981 EasyWriter is selected by IBM for use with the IBM Personal Computer

WordStar for CP/M-86 machines released offered with WordStar; MailMerge, and SuperCalc

Charles Simonyi leaves Xerox PARC and joins Microsoft

Intel 80286: 16-bit data path; 16 Mbytes of memory; 3 MIPS [million instructions per second]

Lotus Development Corp. offers Lotus 1-2-3

Columbia Data Products produces the first IBM PC clone

1982 Time magazine names The Computer as its “Man of the Year” WordPerfect 2.20 introduced for the IBM PC ($495)

WordStar for PC-DOS released

Volkswriter released by Lifetree Software

PC Magazine launched

1983 launched in May, with a “desk-top” metaphor using a mouse, icons, and pull-down menus ($9,995)

September: Microsoft introduces MS Word for DOS

September: NewWord 1 (WordStar clone) released by NewStar Inc.

November: Microsoft unveils , an extension of the MS-DOS operating system that provides a graphical operating environment

WordPerfect 3.0 released PC World magazine debuts

Creative Computing magazine publishes special issue on word processing packages

8 January 1984: Seymour Rubinstein suffers a heart attack and relinquishes control of MicroPro

Apple ($2,495) is unveiled during Super Bowl football game

Electric Pencil PC (for the IBM Personal Computer) released

1984 March: MicroPro goes public

NewWord 2 released

WordPerfect 4.0 released

MultiMate for the IBM PC released by Softword Systems Inc. (later renamed International)

Intel 80386: 32-bit data path; 4 Gbytes of memory; 5 MIPS

January: 1 for Macintosh; Word 2.0 for DOS released

Ashton-Tate acquires MultiMate International 1985 WordStar 2000 released for MS-DOS and AT&T computers

WordPerfect 4.1 released

Microsoft Windows 1.0 introduced

Intel-based personal computers reach 50 percent of new sales

WordPerfect takes off with introduction of 4.2; surpasses WordStar

PC Magazine reviews 57 word processing packages for IBM PC and clones 1986 October: Microsoft Word 3 for Macintosh (there was no version 2) released

October: Microsoft Word 3 (DOS) released

October: WordPerfect 4.2 released

1987 WordStar 4.0 for CP/M and WordStar 4.0 for DOS released

WordPerfect 4.1 for DEC/VAX, ($395) and Atari ST ($295) released WordPerfect is number 1 word processing package according to Liebowitz and Margolis, Winners, Losers & Microsoft

October: Microsoft Windows 2.0 and Microsoft Word 4 (DOS) released

Microsoft and IBM release OS/2

Intel-based personal computers constitute 50 percent of installed base

PC Magazine reviews 55 word processing packages for IBM PCs and clones

WordStar 5.0 for DOS released

WordPerfect 4.2 for VAX, Data General, AT&T Unix, and NCR Unix released

WordPerfect 1.0 for Macintosh released 1988 WordPerfect Office for DEC VAX and WordPerfect Office for DOS LANs released

WordPerfect Library 1.0 for Commodore Amiga introduced

WordPerfect 5.0 for DOS released

WordPerfect 4.2 for SCO and Unix introduced

WordPerfect 4.2 for DEC , Pyramid Tech Unix, Sun 3 introduced

Intel 80486: 32-bit data path; 4 Gbytes of memory; 25 MIPS

Microsoft introduces MS Word for Windows

March: Microsoft Word 4 for Macintosh released

Microsoft Word 5.0 (DOS) released 1989 WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS released

August: for Macintosh (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) introduced

MicroPro changes name to WordStar International

1990 Microsoft Windows 3.0 released

Microsoft Office for Windows (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) introduced

WordStar 6.0 for DOS released

WordPerfect 4.2 for IBM System/370 introduced Word for Macintosh is #1 in sales (Macintosh wps)

Microsoft becomes the first personal computer software company to exceed $1 billion in sales in a single year, with revenues of $1.18 billion

Microsoft Word 2 for Windows released

WordPerfect 5.1 for Windows introduced

WordStar for Windows 1.0 introduced 1991 Lotus Smart Suite (Lotus 1-2-3, AmiPro, Freelance) introduced

Microsoft Word 5 for Macintosh released

Microsoft Word 5.5 (DOS) released

Microsoft releases Windows 3.1 with more than 1,000 enhancements; creates unprecedented user demand with over a million advance orders worldwide

Microsoft Office 3 (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) released

Word for Windows is best-selling word processing package (eclipsing 1992 WordPerfect DOS)

WordStar 1.1 for Windows released

WordPerfect 5.2 for Windows released

Microsoft Office is 50 percent of Microsoft’s office application sales

Intel Pentium: 64-bit data path; 4 Gbytes of memory; 111 MIPS

Microsoft Windows NT 3.1 released

Word for Windows 6 (renumbered to parallel DOS versions) released

Word 6.0 for DOS released

1993 Word 6 for Macintosh released

WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS released

WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows released

WordPerfect Corporation and form an alliance and release Borland Office for Windows (WordPerfect, , and )

1994 buys WordPerfect Corporation and Quattro Pro and Paradox from Borland

WordStar International becomes SoftKey International

Major sources for dates in the timeline:

P. Freiberger and M. Swaine, Fire in the Valley, McGraw-Hill, 2000 M. Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry, MIT Press, 2003 W.E. Peterson, Almost Perfect: How a Bunch of Regular Guys Built WordPerfect Corporation, Prima Publishing, 1994 M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine, Viking Press, 2001 D. Ichbiah and S. Knepper, The Making of Microsoft, Prima Publishing, 1991; see Appendix B: “Key Dates in Microsoft History” WordStar—“A Potted History of WordStar” by Michael Petrie; http://www.wordstar.org/wordstar/history.htm WordPerfect—“WPDOS: A Chronology of Versions”; http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/chronology.html Microsoft Word—http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word Microsoft Windows—“ Windows”; http://www.computerhope.com/history/windows.htm Microsoft Windows Products History: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/WinHistoryDesktop.mspx Key Events in Microsoft History: formerly available at www.microsoft.com/mscorp/museum/home.asp (and now available at) http://64.233.161.104/search? q=cache:ESyS_DUHJiIJ:www.microsoft.com/msft/download West Coast Computer Faire: http://www.Wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Computer_Faire