Forethought, Inc.
Forethought, Inc. was a computer software company, best known as developers of what is now Microsoft PowerPoint.
[edit] History
In late 1983, Rob Campbell and Taylor Pohlman founded Forethought, Inc in order to develop object oriented bit-mapped application software. In 1984, they hired Bob Gaskins, a former Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley, in exchange for a large percentage of the company's stock. He and software developer Dennis Austin led the development of a program called Presenter, which they later renamed PowerPoint.[1] Also in 1984, Forethought acquired the rights to publish a Macintosh version of a DOS-based application called Nutshell. They named the Mac version FileMaker and it soon became enormously successful.[2]
PowerPoint 1.0 was released in 1987 for the Apple Macintosh. It ran in black and white, generating text-and-graphics pages for overhead transparencies. A new full color version of PowerPoint shipped a year later after the first color Macintosh came to market. Later in 1987, Forethought and PowerPoint were purchased by Microsoft Corporation for $14 million.[3] In 1990 the first Windows versions were produced. Since 1990, PowerPoint has been a standard part of the Microsoft Office suite of applications except for the Basic Edition.
[edit] References
- ^ Absolute Powerpoint
- ^ Glenn Koenig (2004-04-02). "FileMaker Early History". http://www.dancing-data.com/filemakerhist.html. Retrieved 2007-10-05.
- ^ "COMPANY NEWS; Microsoft Buys Software Unit". New York Times. 1987-07-31. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE7DD1530F932A05754C0A961948260. Retrieved 2006-12-02.
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