<P> The first version of Microsoft Word was developed by Charles Simonyi and Richard Brodie , former Xerox programmers hired by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1981 . Both programmers worked on Xerox Bravo , the first WYSIWYG ( What You See Is What You Get ) word processor . The first Word version , Word 1.0 , was released in October 1983 for Xenix and MS - DOS ; it was followed by four very similar versions that were not very successful . The first Windows version was released in 1989 , with a slightly improved interface . When Windows 3.0 was released in 1990 , Word became a huge commercial success . Word for Windows 1.0 was followed by Word 2.0 in 1991 and Word 6.0 in 1993 . Then it was renamed to Word 95 and Word 97 , Word 2000 and Word for Office XP ( to follow Windows commercial names ) . With the release of Word 2003 , the numbering was again year - based . Since then , Word 2007 , Word 2010 , Word 2013 , and most recently , Word 2016 have been released for Windows . </P>
<P> The first version of Microsoft Word was developed by Charles Simonyi and Richard Brodie , former Xerox programmers hired by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1981 . Both programmers worked on Xerox Bravo , the first WYSIWYG ( What You See Is What You Get ) word processor . The first Word version , Word 1.0 , was released in October 1983 for Xenix and MS - DOS ; it was followed by four very similar versions that were not very successful . The first Windows version was released in 1989 , with a slightly improved interface . When Windows 3.0 was released in 1990 , Word became a huge commercial success . Word for Windows 1.0 was followed by Word 2.0 in 1991 and Word 6.0 in 1993 . Then it was renamed to Word 95 and Word 97 , Word 2000 and Word for Office XP ( to follow Windows commercial names ) . With the release of Word 2003 , the numbering was again year - based . Since then , Word 2007 , Word 2010 , Word 2013 , and most recently , Word 2016 have been released for Windows . </P>
when was the first version of word released
when was the first version of word released
October 1983
October 1983