The Microsoft Archives

One of the cool things about working at Microsoft is having access to the Microsoft Archives. It turns out that Microsoft has been quite fastidious about keep record of all product and press releases since the beginning of time. And all of this information is available through an easy web search (for me ;-)).

A couple of cool / odd facts that I have been able to drag up are:

  • Windows 1.0 was demonstrated at the 1983 Comdex, but was never released. Windows 1.03 was the first version of Windows to be made publicly available in 1985
  • Soon after releasing Microsoft BOB, we then released the 'Microsoft BOB Plus Pack'. Hmmm... Don't know what to say about that :-)
  • In 1980 Microsoft actually released their own PASCAL compiler - this was something that I never knew. This compiler was maintained through to 1988.

Trawling through the archives is a fun way to see how far we have come. I just finished reading over the original press releases for the launch of Microsoft OS/2 1.0!

Cheers,
Ben