Windows at 30: The original history

Tandy Trower isn’t a name you hear much these days, but without him we might not be celebrating Microsoft Windows' 30th birthday.

Now Founder and CEO of Hoaloha Robotics, Trower was hired at Microsoft by Steve Ballmer in 1981 and played a crucial role in the development MS-DOS and Windows. In later years, he led Microsoft’s brief excursion into robotics (yes, Microsoft launched a robotics development kit in 2006)

I asked Trower what he remembers from the development and launch of Microsoft’s first graphical operating system and he offered this fascinating recollection. —Lance Ulanoff

I started on the project in January 1985. By then Windows was considered already a year late, as Microsoft had promised to ship Windows by Comdex 1984. At that time, I was product manager for Microsoft programming languages family (BASIC, COBOL, Pascal, FORTRAN, Macro Assembler, and C)I had just gone through one of those famous project reviews with Bill Gates, who had peppered me with questions about why I was allowing Philippe Kahn to steal the market from us with Turbo Pascal, and now potentially with Turbo BASIC Read more...