PowerPoint’s 30th Birthday – History Infographic
To celebrate PowerPoint turning 30 years old, Glisser has pulled together some of the twistsand turns of its life so far. Through its sheer versatility, it’s amongst the longest serving
software applications on the market. With additions like Glisser’s PowerPoint
extension, it’s ready for the next 30 years in the hands of the social media generation.
1984
Robert Gaskins invented and workedalone on ‘Presenter’, printing the twopage concept on his dot matrix printer,before later being joined by Denis Austinand then Tom Rudkin.
March 1987
PowerPoint became the first venturecapital investment ever made byApple’s Strategic Investment Group.
April 1987
PowerPoint 1.0 for Mac was black-and-white-only, and was firstavailable on 20th April 1987 (on foppydisk of course). Two days after release,all 8000 copies in stock had been sold.
July 1987
Microsoft bought PowerPoint for $14M(equivalent to $30M in 2017) with theoriginal founding team becomingMicrosoft’s ‘Graphic Business Unit’.
1988
PowerPoint 2.0, or “Color PowerPoint”was released, to capitalise on hardware improvements. It boasted a massive 256colours, and also included graphing tools and bullet points.
1992PowerPoint 3.0 added animations, sound and video effects, transitionsand drawing tools, turning businesspeopleand teachers around the worldinto budding Martin Scorseses.
February 1992
The very first public use of a laptop toproject video from PowerPoint tookplace on 25 February 1992, at the HotelRegina, in the Place des Pyramides, Paris.
1997
PowerPoint 8.0 (for Windows 97)introduced auto-clipart and ‘Clippy’, the much maligned Office assistant,proving not all evolutions worked out!
2000Startup adoption of PowerPoint wascemented in the dot.com bubble betweenwhen investors wanted 10-slide decksrather than 80-page business plans.
2007
PowerPoint 12.0 included SmartArt to effectively kill off clipart.
2009
Prezi was launched to challengePowerPoint with an alternative nonlinearapproach. Many users love thenew concept, but others report audiences suffering from motion sickness from
too much animation.
2010
PowerPoint skipped over 13.0for superstitious reasons.
2014
Technology startupGlisser launchedto live-share PowerPoint slides toaudience phones, and incorporatedlive audience response and integratedsocial media feeds.
2016
Powerpoint announces ArtificialIntelligence elements. ‘Designer’ helpsusers automate the creation of slidesand presentations. AI marks a significantevolution in PowerPoint and is heraldedas a new age of app features.
2017
PowerPoint celebrates its 30th birthday.