Microsoft Word celebrates its 40th birthday this year as the world's most popular word processing program. Word has more than one billion users and is part of the Microsoft Office suite of office applications, which includes Excel spreadsheet, PowerPoint presentation maker, Outlook mailer and more.

The history of Word dates back to 1983, when Microsoft introduced its first version for IBM PCs running MS-DOS. The program was written by Richard Brodie, but borrowed many ideas from Bravo, the first graphical interface word processor developed at Xerox's Palo Alto research centre.

Charles Simonyi to speak at the 2019 Hacker News Seattle Meetup

The creator of Bravo, Hungarian-born Charles Simonyi, left Xerox in 1981 to work for Microsoft. Simonyi led the development of Word and Excel, and was the first to create the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) principle, which allowed users to see what their document would look like in print while editing.

Word was soon released for Apple Macintosh (1984), SCO UNIX and Microsoft Windows. New features such as spell-checking, formatting, tables, images, links and automatic saving were added all the time.

Word became part of the Office package in 1990, which harmonised different applications and simplified office work. The Office packages have spread to business, education and home users.

Word has evolved over the years to adapt to new technologies and needs. Word 2007 introduced a new file format (.docx) that was smaller and easier to share. Word 2010 added cloud storage and collaboration through OneDrive.

Charles Simonyi (September 10, 1948 -) Hungarian-born American software developer who played a key role in the development of Microsoft Word and Excel. Creator of Hungarian notation and intent-oriented programming, two-time space tourist.

Simonyi was born in Budapest, his father was a Kossuth Prize-winning physicist. As a high school student, he programmed on a Ural-2 computer, then moved to Denmark and the United States, where he earned a degree in engineering mathematics and computer science.

In 1981, he joined Microsoft, where he was lead developer for Word and Excel. In 2002, he left Microsoft to found his own company, Intentional Software, which was bought back by Microsoft in 2017.

Simonyi was the second Hungarian to go into space twice, in 2007 and 2009. He was the fifth and seventh space tourist to visit the International Space Station. He currently lives in Seattle with his wife and three children. His fortune is estimated at more than $5 billion.

Source: Wikipedia

In 2013, Word released its mobile version for Android and iOS. In 2016, Word integrated intelligent search and help with Bing and Cortana. And in Word 2019, it offered new tools for designing and presenting documents.

Microsoft Word is no longer just a word processor, it is a universal communication tool that allows users to easily create, edit and share content across different platforms and devices. Word will continue to innovate and open up new possibilities for the future.