PowerPoint is celebrating its 35th birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY POWERPOINT!

On April 20, 2022, the program turned 35 years old. Craziness!
It means a lot to us because it's oursmost important work tool– after all, we are a PowerPoint agency.
That's why we want to use the birthday as an opportunity and take a closer look at the story behind the presentation program.

Where is the origin of PowerPoint?

In July 1984, Robert Gaskins was hired at the small software company Forethought to develop new graphical operating system software.
After just a month, Gaskins came up with the idea for PowerPoint– and implemented these under the project name “Presentation graphics for overhead projection”.

Just a few months later, in November '84, he began developing the program under the name "Presenter" for Macintosh. However, since this name was already registered by another software company, a different name was needed.
How did Gaskins come up with “PowerPoint”? It happened to him while he was showering.

The year 1987 was a significant year in the tech world as the Macintosh SE and Mac ll computers were released in March.Just a month later, on April 20, 1987, the time had come: the presentation software PowerPoint saw the light of day.Initially only for Macintosh. At that time you could purchase the program on a diskette so that you could install it on a computer. In the middle of the year, Microsoft bought the PowerPoint program from the software company Forethought. This was one of the company's first major acquisitions - and probably one of the best decisions ever.

In 1990 the version for Windows was released.

PowerPoint today?
A fully-fledged graphics program that is evolving almost daily.

And how has PowerPoint changed over the years?

The presentation program is nowavailable in 87 languagesand is used every day all over the world. It is also called the “gold standard” among business communications software. Due to continued high demand, PowerPoint is constantly being developed, with new features being added to the presentation program almost every month.

In 2022, PowerPoint will be an integral part of many people's everyday working lives -But what is it like when you start a company whose business idea is directly dependent on the PowerPoint program?

Marion Koppitz founded i‑pointing in 2001 - the PowerPoint program had already been on the market for 14 years.Nevertheless, it has of course undergone a lot of change to date, says Marion Koppitz:
“PowerPoint was pretty ugly in 1987… looking back. There were no elegant functions and everything was reminiscent of a drawing board, just with a computer. But, it was and is deeply democratic. A presentation program that everyone could afford and that was soon on 97% of work computers. And stayed there too. PowerPoint today? A fully-fledged graphics program that is evolving almost daily. And it also has a nice surface.”

We look forward to many more years with PowerPoint and are excited to see how it will continue to develop.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY POWERPOINT!

Sources:
Insider Office: Happy 35th anniversary powerpoint
Microsoft: In which languages ​​is Office available
Slidelizard: PowerPoint History