Forethought, Inc.
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| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 1983; 42 years ago (1983) |
| Founder | |
| Defunct | 1987 (1987) |
| Fate | Acquired by Microsoft |
Forethought, Inc. was a computer software company, best known as developers of what is now Microsoft PowerPoint.
History
[edit ]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 Robert 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. That year Forethought was purchased by Microsoft Corporation for 14ドル million (~32ドル.2 million in 2023).[3] [4] In May 1990 the first Windows 3.0 versions were produced. Since 1990, PowerPoint has been a standard part of the Microsoft Office suite of applications except for the Basic Edition. Microsoft PowerPoint would go on to become the most used and sought after presentation suite, having a 95% market share.
References
[edit ]- ^ Parker, Ian. "Absolute Powerpoint". Ohio State University. Archived from the original on 26 August 2021. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
- ^ Koenig, Glenn (2004年04月02日). "The Origin of FileMaker". Dancing-Data. Retrieved 2018年01月03日.
- ^ "COMPANY NEWS; Microsoft Buys Software Unit" . The New York Times. 1987年07月31日. Retrieved 2006年12月02日.
- ^ Keefe, Patricia (1987年08月03日). "Microsoft buys Forethought". Computerworld. p. 81. Retrieved 2024年11月01日.
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