Microsoft Word and Windows are such a familiar pair that it is easy to assume the word processor grew directly out of the operating system. That assumption misses a much stranger timeline. Word was already a commercial product before Microsoft announced Windows, and its earliest development did not happen on MS-DOS. The first versions were built on Xenix, Microsoft's own version of Unix. This chapter of Word's history highlights a far more open and experimental Microsoft, one that was ready to put its software on a range of platforms in the early 1980s.

Microsoft had a Unix phase before Windows

Microsoft is now defined by Windows, but in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the company had a much broader strategy. Unix was becoming an important operating system for businesses and universities, thanks in large part to research at Bell Labs. Microsoft wanted a share of that growing market, so it announced its own Unix system, called Xenix, in August 1980. Xenix was a portable Unix system for 16-bit processors, and Microsoft presented it as a robust alternative for users who needed something more capable than the limited personal computers of the day.

Xenix was not a small side project. By 1982, Microsoft was already running several Xenix machines on its internal network. The company partnered with the Santa Cruz Operation, better known as SCO, to develop and support Xenix across different hardware architectures. That cooperation made Xenix one of the most widely used Unix systems of the early microcomputer era. Microsoft later claimed that Xenix was the most popular Unix variant by 1984. IBM even selected Xenix and MS-DOS for the IBM PC AT, showing that both operating system paths were still seen as credible directions for the industry.

For a company that would eventually build its fortune on Windows, this Unix investment can look odd. But at the time, Microsoft had no operating system that could compete with Unix's power and portability. Xenix allowed Microsoft to participate in the high-end operating system arena without needing to create an entirely new foundation, and it positioned the company as a practical, multi-platform software vendor.

Word's development began on Xenix

Word came out of this Unix-focused Microsoft. The key figure was Charles Simonyi, a computer scientist who joined Microsoft in 1981 after spending years at Xerox PARC. At Xerox PARC, Simonyi

Source:MakeUseOf News