Robert Gaskins

PowerPoint was the first presentation software designed for Macintosh and Windows, received the first venture capital investment ever made by Apple, then became the first significant acquisition ever made by Microsoft, who set up a new Graphics Business Unit in Silicon Valley to develop it further. Now, twenty-five years later, PowerPoint is familiar to almost everybody.

Microsoft says that PowerPoint is now installed on more than one billion computers, in every country worldwide. Just about every organization in the world uses it, not only companies large and small but entrepreneurs, artists, non-profits, students, governments, and religious leaders. But twenty-five years ago PowerPoint was the unknown product of a tiny startup in Silicon V

PowerPoint was the first presentation software designed for Macintosh and Windows, received the first venture capital investment ever made by Apple, then became the first significant acquisition ever made by Microsoft, who set up a new Graphics Business Unit in Silicon Valley to develop it further. Now, twenty-five years later, PowerPoint is familiar to almost everybody.

Microsoft says that PowerPoint is now installed on more than one billion computers, in every country worldwide. Just about every organization in the world uses it, not only companies large and small but entrepreneurs, artists, non-profits, students, governments, and religious leaders. But twenty-five years ago PowerPoint was the unknown product of a tiny startup in Silicon Valley that was struggling to stay alive long enough to finish it.

In this book, Robert Gaskins (who invented the PowerPoint idea, managed its design and development, and then headed the new Microsoft group) tells the story of its first years, recounting the perils and disasters narrowly evaded as a startup, dissecting the complexities of being the first distant development group in Microsoft, and explaining decisions and insights that enabled PowerPoint to become a lasting success well beyond its original business uses.

We look back now from a time when primary school children must pass exams in PowerPoint, because their teachers believe that knowing it will be vital to their future success at all levels of education, and in their careers. Steven Pinker says that "these days scientists ... cannot lecture without PowerPoint." Sermons are delivered using PowerPoint in church buildings rebuilt to incorporate large screens for the purpose. The Secretary of State uses PowerPoint to address the United Nations on questions of war and peace. Newspapers and magazines and books mention PowerPoint casually with no explanation needed. Novelists write chapters of their books in PowerPoint. Rich Gold says that "within today's corporation, if you want to communicate an idea to your peers or to your boss or to your employees or to your customer or even to your enemy, you use PowerPoint."

Although the software has become very familiar, the story is not so well known of how this software invention rapidly became the international standard for business users, how it actually replaced the overheads and 35mm slides that it was originally designed to produce, and how after that it has gone on to play a wider part in contemporary culture.