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Microsoft PowerPoint - Wikipedia

Microsoft PowerPoint

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Microsoft PowerPoint, or simply PowerPoint, is a presentation program1 developed by Microsoft.

It was originally created by Robert Gaskins, Tom Rudkin, and Dennis Austin1 at a software company named Forethought, Inc.1 It was released on April 20, 1987,2 initially for Macintosh computers only.1 Microsoft acquired PowerPoint for about $14 million three months after it appeared.3 This was Microsoft’s first significant acquisition,4 and Microsoft set up a new business unit for PowerPoint in Silicon Valley where Forethought had been located.4

PowerPoint became a component of the Microsoft Office suite, first offered in 1989 for Macintosh5 and in 1990 for Windows,6 which bundled several Microsoft apps. Beginning with PowerPoint 4.0 (1994), PowerPoint was integrated into Microsoft Office development, and adopted shared common components and a converged user interface.7

PowerPoint’s market share was very small at first, prior to introducing a version for Microsoft Windows, but grew rapidly with the growth of Windows and of Office.8 Since the late 1990s, PowerPoint’s worldwide market share of presentation software has been estimated at 95 percent.9

PowerPoint was originally designed to provide visuals for group presentations within business organizations, but has come to be widely used in other communication situations in business and beyond.10 The wider use led to the development of the PowerPoint presentation as a new form of communication,11 with strong reactions including advice that it should be used less,12 differently,13 or better.14

The first PowerPoint version (Macintosh, 1987) was used to produce overhead transparencies,15 the second (Macintosh, 1988; Windows, 1990) could also produce color 35 mm slides.15 The third version (Windows and Macintosh, 1992) introduced video output of virtual slideshows to digital projectors, which would over time replace physical transparencies and slides.15 A dozen major versions since then have added additional features and modes of operation7 and have made PowerPoint available beyond Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows, adding versions for iOS, Android, and web access.16

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. “Microsoft PowerPoint”. Encyclopaedia Britannica. November 25, 2013. Archived from the original on October 8, 2015. Retrieved August 25, 2017. Microsoft PowerPoint, virtual presentation software developed by Robert Gaskins, Tom Rudkin and Dennis Austin for the American computer software company Forethought, Inc. The program, initially named Presenter, was released for the Apple Macintosh in 1987. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. Mace, Scott (March 2, 1969). “Presentation Package Lets Users Control Look”. InfoWorld. Vol. 9, no. 9. p. 5. ISSN 0199-6649. Retrieved August 25, 2017. The $395 program will be shipped to dealers on April 20, Forethought said. ↩

  3. “Microsoft PowerPoint”. Encyclopaedia Britannica. November 25, 2013. Archived from the original on October 8, 2015. Retrieved August 25, 2017… in 1987… [i]n July of that year, the Microsoft Corporation, in its first significant software acquisition, purchased the rights to PowerPoint for $14 million. ↩

  4. “Microsoft Buys Software Unit”. Company News. New York Times. Vol. CXXXV, no. 46, 717. July 31, 1987. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on May 24, 2015. Retrieved August 25, 2017… the acquisition of Forethought is the first significant one for Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Wash. Forethought would remain in Sunnyvale, giving Microsoft a Silicon Valley presence. ↩ ↩2

  5. Flynn, Laurie (June 19, 1989). “The Microsoft Office Bundles 4 Programs”. InfoWorld. Vol. 11, no. 25. p. 37. ISSN 0199-6649. Retrieved August 25, 2017. ↩

  6. Johnston, Stuart J. (October 1, 1990). “Office for Windows Bundles Popular Microsoft Applications”. InfoWorld. Vol. 12, no. 40. p. 16. ISSN 0199-6649. Retrieved August 25, 2017. ↩

  7. Austin, Dennis (2001). “PowerPoint Version Timeline (to PowerPoint 7.0, 1995)” (PDF). GBU Wizards of Menlo Park. Retrieved August 24, 2017. ↩ ↩2

  8. Gaskins, Robert (2012). Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint. Vinland Books. ISBN 978-0-9851424-0-7. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 24, 2017. Retrieved August 12, 2017. ↩

  9. Thielsch, Meinald T.; Perabo, Isabel (May 2012). “Use and Evaluation of Presentation Software” (PDF). Technical Communication. 59 (2): 112–123. ISSN 0049-3155. Archived (PDF) from the original on August 9, 2016. Retrieved August 24, 2017. For many years, Microsoft has led the market with its program PowerPoint. Zongker and Salesin (2003) estimated a market share of 95% in 2003, and a Forrester study (Montalbano, 2009) widely confirmed this number, stating that only 8% of enterprise customers use alternative products. ↩

  10. “Microsoft PowerPoint”. Encyclopaedia Britannica. November 25, 2013. Archived from the original on August 28, 2017. Retrieved August 24, 2017. PowerPoint was developed for business use but has wide applications elsewhere such as for schools and community organizations ↩

  11. Davies, Russell (May 26, 2016). “29 Reasons to Love PowerPoint”. Wired UK. ISSN 1758-8332. Archived from the original on August 15, 2017. Retrieved September 6, 2017. “29 Bullets”. Archived from the original on September 11, 2017. Retrieved October 26, 2017. ↩

  12. Tufte, Edward (2006) [1st ed. 2003, 24 pg.]. The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within (2nd ed.). Cheshire, Connecticut: Graphics Press LLC. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-9613921-6-1. ↩

  13. Atkinson, Cliff; Mayer, Richard E. (April 23, 2004). “Five ways to reduce PowerPoint overload” (PDF). ResearchGate. Revision 1.1. Archived from the original on June 17, 2015. Retrieved September 23, 2017. ↩

  14. Kosslyn, Stephen M. (2007). Clear and to the Point: Eight Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations. Oxford University Press. p. 222. ISBN 978-0-19-532069-5. ↩

  15. Gaskins, Robert (December 2007). “PowerPoint at 20: Back to Basics”. Viewpoint. Communications of the ACM. 50 (12): 17. doi:10.1145/1323688.1323710. ISSN 0001-0782. S2CID 48306. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 7, 2016. Retrieved May 27, 2015. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  16. “Compare PowerPoint features on different platforms”. Microsoft Support. April 19, 2022. Retrieved October 23, 2022. ↩

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