In an increasingly digitalized world like the modern one, there is no more natural and obvious gesture than starting a PC or notebook and seeing the logo appear. Windows. The operating system created by Microsofta company born from the imagination and genius of Bill Gates And Paul Allen has now reached its eleventh version. Windows 11in fact, is the operating system of the computers currently on the market, with a power and a wealth of performances that manage to rival if not actually excel its competitor Apple. However, the operating system we know today is only the result of numerous changes, modifications and revisions, which have their roots in a day forty years ago.
In fact, on November 20, 1985, it was launched on the market at a price of 99 dollars Windows 1.0, the first graphic system that would end up revolutionizing the world of information technology first and then digital. In reality, Bill Gates had already announced and presented his revolutionary operating system in 1983, but the sale suffered several delays, to the point that many industry experts began to suspect that the graphical operating system was just smoke and mirrors, an ambition that would not find any application in real life. Microsoft, however, was determined to demonstrate how the Windows project, begun in 1981, was destined for success.
In the 1980s, Microsoft was already a giant in the technological and IT world thanks to the so-called MS-DOS (acronym which stands for Microsoft Disk Operating System), an operating system monotask. Its characteristic was its iconic command line interfacewhile the performance was to allow only one user at a time to be able to use only one program or software. Although today this type of work appears obsolete and slow, in the 1980s MS-DOS was loaded onto IBM PCs, effectively becoming the leader in the sector. MS-DOS, however, had quite a few limitations. Not only was there no possibility to use the multitaskingbut also the limit of working only at 16bit and with a RAM that “consumed” 640 KB of memory. This meant that the system, in the long run, was unstable and unreliable. Precisely for this reason, Microsoft decided to start from scratch with a new operating system and this decision led to the birth of Windows 1.0.
Command line interface retired Windows 1.0 It immediately attracted attention for its much more intuitive and easy-to-use graphical environment. A system, that of Windows, which also became more “democratic”, because it was also accessible to those who did not know computer language nor were they necessarily people whose work was closely linked to the use of the PC. Furthermore, the first version of Windows already had some applications within it that still persist today, albeit in an improved version. Like the Notepadthe calculator and the Paintbrush. They were also introduced Write (which we can consider an ancestor of Word) and the Cardfilea kind of digital archive. With the introduction of Windows 1.0 the use of also spread mouse. The user could interact with the operating system by moving the mouse and stimulating the graphic effects present on the desktopwithout necessarily having to limit yourself to typing text commands as was the case with MS-DOS. Windows 1.0 it also led to the much sought after multitasking, with the creation of overlapping “windows” that gave the operating system its name (windows, in fact, means windows) and also appeared in the logo. Furthermore, the new operating system also conquered a APIs (Application Programming Interface) stable, which allowed software and applications to communicate and allow data to pass without any system crashes or freezes. Among the features there was also the use of two units floppy disks – the diskettes that preceded the CD-ROM – and a 192 KB RAM. As soon as Windows 1.0 was launched on the market, the first reactions were scepticism. On the one hand it seemed that the creation of this specific operating system had too high additional costs for features that “conservatives” considered useless.
On the other hand, there was the suspicion that the first version of Windows was not capable of delivering everything it promised. In the long run, however, Microsoft’s bet proved to be much more than successful and forty years after that first launch, Windows is still the undisputed king of the IT world.