+3 votes
84 views
History, uses and curiosities of PowerPoint

in Help by (551k points)
reopened | 84 views

1 Answer

+4 votes
Best answer

The history of PowerPoint and other curiosities
Microsoft got away with it

image

Who to this day does not know or has used PowerPoint? It is one of the most used presentation programs in the world. And today we are going to talk a little more in depth about him. What history and PowerPoint trivia should we know?

We use it to present a job in an education center, a work project or even a tribute to a friend or relative on their birthday. PowerPoint is a software developed by Microsoft to provide the user with slide presentations made from images and texts. Custom templates are available that can be downloaded and save a lot of time and dedication..

The history of PowerPoint and other curiosities

A little history. Mid-1980s Robert Gaskins (considered the father and creator of PowerPoint), Dennis Austin, and Thomas Rudkin, three young workers at the Forethought startup , were involved in software development.

At the time, they were involved in a new project: the first computer graphics presentation program. Making a presentation then was arduous: you needed a slide projector and had to be changed by hand. In 1986 only 12% of the slides were made by computer . The rest of the presentations were made by hand..

The first name that this software had was Presenter, but they had to change it due to rights problems. It was originally aimed at Macintosh computers and was developed over three years. It ended up selling about 10,000 units. The program specifications only took up a couple of pages and were presented under the heading of ' Presentation Graphics for Overhead Projection '.

image

Microsoft got away with it

No company seemed interested in him. Although after two years of tough negotiations it was finally sold to Microsoft. And it is that the multinational owned by Bill Gates was, then, developing its own presentation software. Initially, Gates was not very happy with the program they were going to acquire, but Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's Business Division until 2005, convinced him that it was a good operation..

The amount paid by Microsoft for the acquisition of Forethought was $ 14 million . A figure that, although at that time it was not negligible, today it has been more than amortized. PowerPoint is integrated into the recently revamped Office 365, one of the most widely used office suites by the general public: there may currently be some 200 million active subscriptions to the service.

In 1993, PowerPoint would reach 78% of the market. Four years later, it was up to 87%, with 4 million copies sold annually.

Today, PowerPoint has emerged as strong competitors, such as the free and open source LibreOffice alternatives or Google Slides . In the end, it is the user, as always, who has the last word.

Images | Unsplash / Charles Deluvio, Microsoft


by (3.5m points)

Related questions

+5 votes
1 answer
asked Oct 19, 2021 in Help by backtothefuture (551k points) | 82 views
+5 votes
1 answer
asked Jun 6, 2022 in Help by backtothefuture (551k points) | 80 views
+4 votes
1 answer
asked May 27, 2022 in Help by backtothefuture (551k points) | 81 views
+4 votes
1 answer
+4 votes
1 answer
asked Jun 21, 2020 in Phone by backtothefuture (551k points) | 242 views
Sponsored articles cost $40 per post. You can contact us via Feedback
10,632 questions
10,764 answers
510 comments
3 users