Microsoft Codenames: A Visual History

First developed as Multi-Tool Word by Charles Simonyi, developer of the first GUI word processor (Bravo), in 1981, Microsoft’s word processor would soon be renamed Microsoft Word after its release for both Xenix and MS-DOS. For a time, the Mac port, Word for Mac, was the height of popularity. But the word processor really came into its own with Word for Windows (codenamed Opus for the existential penguin from Berkeley Breathed’s comic strip Bloom County), released in 1989. It became the market leader for IBM PC-compatible computers following the release of Windows 3.0 in 1990.

Codenamed Daytona (for Daytona International Speedway in Daytona, Fla.) because the goal was to increase the speed of the operating system, Windows NT 3.5 was released in 1994. It was the second release of the Windows NT operating system and the first version to adopt the names Windows NT Workstation and Windows NT Server for its editions. The 3.5 release included integrated Winsock and TCP/IP support, updating the incomplete implementation of TCP/IP in Windows NT 3.1.

Along with Windows 95, 1995 also saw the release of another product that would play a pivotal role in Microsoft’s history: Internet Explorer 1. Codenamed O’Hare for the airport that Microsoft said would provide “a point of departure to distant places from Chicago,” the browser would first be shipped in Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95. In time, Microsoft’s decision to bundle the browser for free with its operating system would kick off the Browser Wars, leading to the ouster of Netscape Navigator as the world’s preeminent Web browser.