Windows 1.0 is a
16-bit-16-bit architecture:The HP BPC, introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor.Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816...
graphical
operating environmentIn computing, an operating environment is the environment in which users run application software, whether by a command-line interface or a graphical user interface .An operating environment is usually not a full operating system but is a form of middleware that rests between the OS and...
that was released on 20 November 1985. It was
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is a multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices...
's first attempt to implement a
multi-taskingIn computing, multitasking is a method by which multiple tasks, also known as processes, share common processing resources such as a CPU. In the case of a computer with a single CPU, only one task is said to be running at any point in time, meaning that the CPU is actively executing instructions...
graphical user interfaceA graphical user interface is a type of user interface item that allows people to interact with programs in more ways than typing such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment with images rather than...
-based
operating environmentIn computing, an operating environment is the environment in which users run application software, whether by a command-line interface or a graphical user interface .An operating environment is usually not a full operating system but is a form of middleware that rests between the OS and...
on the
PCA personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator...
platform. Windows 1.0 was the very first version of Windows launched. It was succeeded by
Windows 2.0Windows 2.0 was a 16-bit Microsoft Windows graphical user interface-based operating environment that superseded Windows 1.0. Windows 2.0 was supplemented by Windows/286 and Windows/386 in 1988. Windows 2.0, Windows/286 and Windows/386 were superseded by Windows 3.0 in May 1990.-Application...
.
History
The first release version of Windows 1.0 is actually numbered 1.01.
Version 1.02, released in May 1986, was international and had editions in several European languages. Version 1.03, released in August 1986, was for the US- and international market, with enhancements making it consistent with the international release. It included drivers for European keyboards and additional screen and printer drivers. Version 1.04, released in April 1987, added support for the VGA graphics adapters of the new
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating...
PS/2The Personal System/2 or PS/2 was IBM's third generation of personal computers. The PS/2 line, released to the public in 1987, was created by IBM in an attempt to recapture control of the PC market by introducing an advanced proprietary architecture...
computers. At the same time, Microsoft and IBM announced the introduction of
OS/2OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
and its graphical OS/2
Presentation ManagerPresentation Manager is the graphical user interface that IBM and Microsoft introduced in version 1.1 of their operating system OS/2 in 1988.-History:At the time, the two companies were collaborating on subsequent versions of OS/2...
, which were supposed to ultimately replace
both MS-DOSMS-DOS is an operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems and was the main operating system for personal computers during the 1980s. It was preceded by M-DOS , designed and copyrighted by Microsoft in 1979...
and Windows.
Windows 1.0 was superseded in November 1987, with the release of
Windows 2.0Windows 2.0 was a 16-bit Microsoft Windows graphical user interface-based operating environment that superseded Windows 1.0. Windows 2.0 was supplemented by Windows/286 and Windows/386 in 1988. Windows 2.0, Windows/286 and Windows/386 were superseded by Windows 3.0 in May 1990.-Application...
. Windows 1.0 was supported by Microsoft for sixteen years, until 31 December 2001. Windows 1.0 was one of the longest supported operating systems of the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems.
Installation media
Windows 1.0 was only available on floppy disks. The user had to have DOS to install.
It was the same with all versions of Windows up to and including
Windows 95Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
, which was still available on diskettes (but no longer required DOS to be installed first).
Competition
The history of Windows dates back to September 1981, when the project named "Interface Manager" was started. It was first presented to the public on 10 November 1983, renamed to "Microsoft Windows"; the two years of delay before release led to charges that it was "
vaporwareVaporware is a term used to describe a product, usually software, that has been announced by a developer during or before its development and, therefore, may never actually be released...
". The initially announced version of Windows had features so much resembling the Macintosh interface that Microsoft had to change many of them: overlapping windows, although supported by the GUI engine, weren't allowed for exactly this reason. The announcement of Windows' imminent arrival in 1985 probably did not help the sales of
VisiCorpVisiCorp was an early personal computer software publisher. Its most famous products are VisiOn and VisiCalc.It was founded in 1976 by Dan Fylstra and Peter R. Jennings as Personal Software, and first published Jennings' Microchess program for the MOS Technology KIM-1 computer, and later Commodore...
's
VisiOnVision or visions may refer to:* Visual perception, eyesight* Adaptation , night vision etc.* Vision , inspirational experiences* Hallucination, vivid conscious perception in the absence of a stimulusMusic:...
environment which debuted at the same time. However, even when finally released, Windows 1.0 aroused little interest.
Another GUI for the PC platform at the time was
GEMGEM is a windowing system created by Digital Research, Inc. for use with the CP/M operating system on the Intel 8088 and Motorola 68000 microprocessors...
. It used more aspects from the Macintosh
GUIGui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
, for example the
trash canIn computing, a recycle bin, or trash, is temporary storage for files that have been deleted in a file manager by the user, but not yet permanently erased from the physical media...
concept (which Microsoft would later employ in future Windows releases) and more generally the desktop interaction. GEM was eventually used as the standard GUI for the
AtariAtari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by Atari Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Infogrames Entertainment SA ....
's
STThe Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was commercially available from 1985 to the early 1990s. It was released by Atari Corporation in 1985...
range of
68kThe Motorola 680x0/m68k/68k/68K is a family of 32-bit CISC microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and were the primary competitors of Intel's x86 microprocessors. Although no modern desktop computers are based on the 68k,...
-based computers, which were sometimes referred to as Jackintoshes (the company being run by
Jack TramielJack Tramiel is a businessman, best known for founding Commodore International - manufacturer of the Commodore PET, Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Commodore Amiga, and other Commodore models of home computers...
). GEM's resemblance to the Macintosh OS later caused legal trouble for the manufacturer,
Digital ResearchDigital Research, Inc. was the company created by Dr. Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related products. It was the first large software company in the microcomputer world. Digital Research should not be confused with Digital Equipment Corporation; the two were not...
, who was obliged to seriously cripple the desktop's appearance and functionality (applications were not affected).
GEM was not multitasking, so users had to close one program in order to run another one. Collections of related programs, like GEM Draw, had tricky File menu items like
Close (to Edit) to facilitate switching.
An alternative multitasker released shortly before was
DESQviewDESQview was a text mode multitasking program developed by Quarterdeck Office Systems which enjoyed modest popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s...
, a successor of
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating...
's failed
TopViewTopView was a text-mode MS-DOS multitasking environment written by IBM and introduced in August of 1984. In order to compete with various other graphical environments, IBM announced TopView before it was finished, around the time they shipped their new PC AT computer.- Hopeful beginnings :IBM...
from 1984. It did not have graphical capabilities initially, but is able to multitask DOS applications in windows as long as they are well-behaved or have a specially written "loader" to fix them on the fly.
Windows 1.0 market share grew very slowly, as there was no
killer appA killer application , in the jargon of computer programmers and video gamers, has been used to refer to any computer program that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware like a gaming console, operating system or other software...
(market-dominating software) that required the graphical shell. The killer apps at the time were generally only available on the Apple Macintosh platform (this statement was true even of Microsoft's Mac-OS-only
Microsoft OfficeMicrosoft Office is an office suite of interrelated desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. Microsoft Office was introduced by Microsoft in 1989 for Mac OS, with a version for Windows in 1990...
).
The Macintosh remained the platform of choice especially for high-end graphics and
desktop publishingDesktop publishing combines a personal computer and WYSIWYG page layout software to create publication documents on a computer for either large scale publishing or small scale local multifunction peripheral output and distribution....
(DTP). Although Aldus PageMaker shipped in January 1987 with a Windows executable, it remained but a curiosity due to poor support relative to the Mac version, and a steep $795 price tag.
PC-based DTP remained out of the reach of most Windows users until the release of $99 Serif PagePlus 1.0 in 1991. PagePlus won considerable praise from the prestigious Seybold Reports, not only for being the first sub-$100 DTP package capable of CMYK color separations but also because Serif backed up their customers with free 24-hour support. Nearly every desktop publishing magazine shootout review would include both programs side by side despite the price differences. In the real world however, the lack of a Mac version meant few prepress service bureaus would accept PC data or PC
PostScriptPostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. PostScript is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas....
files. Corel Draw 1.0,
MicrografxMicrografx was a US-based software-house most notable for its graphics products. It was founded in 1982 by Paul and George Grayson and was the first company to release sophisticated graphics product for the Windows platform.The company was acquired by Corel in late 2001. With this acquisition, the...
Picture Publisher, Paint Shop Pro, and Cool Edit also provided a Windows-only focus and provided capabilities previously only found in expensive applications.
Other shell programs for MS-DOS include
Norton CommanderNorton Commander was a prototypical orthodox file manager , written by John Socha and released by Peter Norton Computing . NC is a file manager which essentially acts as the text user interface for DOS. It was officially produced by Symantec between 1986 and 1998...
, PC Tools,
XTreeXTree is file manager software originally designed for use under DOS. It was published by Executive Systems and first released on 1 April 1985, and became highly popular...
.
DOS ShellThe DOS Shell is a file manager, first debuted in MS-DOS and IBM DOS 4.0 . It was discontinued after version 6.0, but retained as part of the "Supplemental Disk" until 6.22 for MS-DOS; as such, it was not a core part of the operating system throughout its evolution, but rather an add-on...
, and DOS Menu (in MS-DOS version 4.0). These applications attempted to be organizational and menu-driven tools, and did not try at all to be a 'desktop' shell.
Features
Windows 1.0 offers limited multitasking of existing MS-DOS programs and concentrates on creating an interaction
paradigmThe word paradigm has been used in linguistics and science to describe distinct concepts....
(cf.
message loopMicrosoft Windows programs are event-based. They act upon messages that the operating system posts to the main application thread. These messages are received by the application by repeatedly calling the GetMessage function in a section of code called the "event loop." The event loop typically...
), an execution model and a stable
APIAn application programming interface is an interface in computer science that defines the ways by which an application program may request services from libraries and/or operating systems. An API determines the vocabulary and calling conventions the programmer should employ to use the services...
for
nativeThe term native mode or native code is used in computing in two related senses.*to describe something running on a computer natively or in native mode meaning that it is running without any external support as contrasted to running in emulation....
programs for the future. Due to Microsoft's extensive support for
backward compatibilityIn technology, for example in telecommunications and computing, a device or technology is said to be backwards compatible if it allows input generated by older devices...
, it is not only possible to execute Windows 1.0
binaryIn computing, an executable causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instructions," as opposed to a file that only contains data. Files that contain instructions for an interpreter or virtual machine may be considered executables, but are more specifically called scripts...
programs on current versions of Windows to a large extent, but also to recompile their
source codeIn computer science, source code is any collection of statements or declarations written in some human-readable computer programming language...
into an equally functional "modern" application with just limited modifications.
WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces...
1.0 is often regarded as a "
front-endFront-end and back-end are generalized terms that refer to the initial and the end stages of a process. The front-end is responsible for collecting input in various forms from the user and processing it to conform to a specification the back-end can use...
to the
MS-DOSMS-DOS is an operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems and was the main operating system for personal computers during the 1980s. It was preceded by M-DOS , designed and copyrighted by Microsoft in 1979...
operating systemAn operating system is an interface between hardware and user which is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer that acts as a host for computing applications run on the machine. As a host, one of the purposes of an operating...
", a description which has also been applied to subsequent versions of Windows. Windows 1.0 is an MS-DOS program. Windows 1.0 programs can call MS-DOS functions, and GUI programs are run from .exe files just like MS-DOS programs. However, Windows .exe files had their own "new executable" (NE) file format, which only Windows could process and which, for example, allowed demand-loading of code and data. Applications were supposed to handle memory only through Windows' own memory management system, which implemented a software-based
virtual memoryVirtual memory is a computer system technique which gives an application program the impression that it has contiguous working memory , while in fact it may be physically fragmented and may even overflow on to disk storage. Systems that use this technique make programming of large applications...
scheme allowing for applications larger than available RAM.
Because graphics support in MS-DOS is extremely limited, MS-DOS applications have to go to the
bare hardware (or sometimes just to the
BIOSIn IBM PC Compatible computers, the basic input/output system , also known as the System BIOS, is a de facto standard defining a firmware interface. The BIOS is boot firmware, designed to be the first code run by a PC when powered on...
) to get work done. Therefore, Windows 1.0 included original
device driverIn computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device....
s for video cards, a mouse, keyboards, printers and serial communications, and applications were supposed to only invoke APIs built upon these drivers. However, this extended to other APIs such as file system management functions. In this sense, Windows 1.0 was designed to be extended into a full-fledged operating system, rather than being just a graphics environment used by applications. Indeed, Windows 1.0 is a "DOS front-end" and cannot operate without a DOS environment (it uses, for example, the file-handling functions provided by DOS.) The level of replacement increases in subsequent versions.
The system requirements for Windows 1.0 constituted CGA/Hercules/EGA (listed as "Monochrome or color monitor"), MS-DOS 3.1, 384K RAM (512KB recommended), and 2 double-sided disk drives or a hard drive.
Windows 1.0 runs a shell program known as MS-DOS Executive. Other supplied programs are
CalculatorMicrosoft Calculator, commonly known as Calculator from the application's title bar, is a calculation application included in all versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system...
,
CalendarCalendar is a personal organiser program that was distributed with Microsoft Windows from version 1.01 until Windows 3.11. It was superseded by the calendar in Microsoft Schedule+, which was included in Windows for Workgroups and Windows NT...
,
CardfileCardfile is a personal information manager that was distributed with Microsoft Windows starting from the original version 1.01 until Windows NT 4.0 Server. Cardfile is also included with Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition, but has to be installed manually from the installation CD-ROM....
, Clipboard viewer, Clock,
Control PanelThe Control Panel is a part of the Microsoft Windows graphical user interface which allows users to view and manipulate basic system settings and controls via applets, such as adding hardware, adding and removing software, controlling user accounts, and changing accessibility options...
, Notepad,
PaintPaint is a simple graphics painting program that has been included with all versions of Microsoft Windows. It is often referred to as MS Paint or Microsoft Paint...
,
ReversiReversi is a board game involving abstract strategy and played by two players on a board with 8 rows and 8 columns and a set of distinct pieces for each side. Pieces typically are disks with a light and a dark face, each side belonging to one player...
,
TerminalA terminal emulator, terminal application, term, or tty for short, is a program that emulates a "dumb" video terminal within some other display architecture....
, and
WriteMicrosoft Write was a simple word processor that came with Microsoft Windows 1.0, Windows 2.0, and the Windows 3.x series. Throughout its lifespan it was minimally updated, and is comparable to early versions of MacWrite...
.
Windows 1.0 does not allow overlapping windows. Instead all windows are
tiledIn computing, a tiling window manager is a window manager with an organization of the screen into mutually non-overlapping frames, as opposed to the more popular approach of coordinate-based stacking of overlapping objects that tries to fully emulate the desktop metaphor.- Xerox PARC :The first...
. Only dialog boxes can appear over other windows.
Windows 1.0 executables, while having the same .exe
extensionA filename extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file applied to indicate the encoding convention of its contents.In some operating systems it is optional, while in some others it is a requirement...
and initial file header as
MS-DOSMS-DOS is an operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems and was the main operating system for personal computers during the 1980s. It was preceded by M-DOS , designed and copyrighted by Microsoft in 1979...
programs, do not contain the so-called
MS-DOS stub which prints the "This program requires Microsoft Windows" message and exits when the program is run outside of Windows. Instead, the file header was formatted in such a way as to make DOS reject the executable with a "program too large to fit in memory" error message.
From the beginning, Windows was intended to multitask programs (although this originally only applied to native applications and for many versions the multitasking was co-operative, rather than preemptive).
Originally Windows was designed to have the pull-up menus at the bottom of windows, as it was common with the DOS programs of the time; however, this was changed before the first release.
External links