Microsoft Office is at its best. The office suite of applications for desktop computers, servers and services for operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, Android and Linux, will be 40 years old in 2023. A brilliant maturity that has consecrated it as essential in most companies and domestic environments when preparing and presenting any type of information, but who is its creator? Behind the Word or the Access that we use every day there is a proper name: Richard Brodie.
This computer programmer is also celebrating his birthday, 63 years, or what is the same At just 23 years old, he created Microsoft Office. However, there are many other technological pioneers who have received the applause, recognition and international fame, while Brodie has always remained in the background.
What is certain is that he did not think, from his native Massachusetts, that he was going to revolutionize, in a certain way, the world of computing at such an early age. And today, still of working age, he can boast of have created the uppercase writing tool.
A writer and professional poker player, he dared to launch a first and primitive version in 1983 together with his friend, also a programmer, Charles Simonyi. Both were programmers who worked with Bill Gates and Paul Allen in a Microsoft company, which was already eager to become one of the most important tech companies in history as it is today.
How Richard Brodie came to create Word
Brodie’s arrival at the company took place just two years earlier, fresh out of college and where, at the time, programmers were in short supply. Given his passion for computers and programming, already controlled the Xerox Bravo, which was the first word processor based on the WYSIWYG technique, or what is the same What You See Is What You Get. That was a format where the user could see what the printed document was going to look like before photocopying it. A program that would inspire you to create the legendary Word.
Brodie was also a founder of the Microsoft Applications Division, until On May 2, 1983, his great milestone came to light: Microsoft Word 1.0, At that time it was intended for the IBM computer under the DOS operating system, although in 1989 it would reach Windows.
Despite his departure from the company in 1986, he ended up returning in 1991 now with a higher status, as Head of Software Designer and main developer of the Omega project, the germ of what in 1992 would be Microsoft Access. Although, in 1994 the prolific programmer would leave Microsoft for good.
Since then, and according to the company’s own data, 1,200 million people around the world use the Office suite every day. Or what is the same, one in seven people on the planet already use Office tools. At the business level, up to 83% of Fortune 500 companies trust Office 365 which already has 23.1 million subscribers. 40 years of maturity, that of the Office, exuberant.
