In 1981, Microsoft hired Charles Simonyi, the primary developer of Bravo, the first GUI word processor, which was developed at Xerox PARC.
Main article: History of Microsoft Word Origins Using Wine, versions of Microsoft Word before 2013 can be run on Linux.Ĭommercial versions of Word are licensed as a standalone product or as a component of Microsoft 365 suite of software, which can be purchased either with a perpetual license or as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription, respectively. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including: IBM PCs running DOS (1983), Apple Macintosh running the Classic Mac OS (1985), AT&T UNIX PC (1985), Atari ST (1988), OS/2 (1989), Microsoft Windows (1989), SCO Unix (1990), macOS (2001), Web browsers (2010), iOS (2014) and Android (2015).
It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Microsoft Word is a word processor developed by Microsoft.
