Ms POWERPOINT
Microsoft PowerPoint is a powerful presentation software developed by Microsoft. It is a standard
component of the company's Microsoft Office suite software, and is bundled together with Word,
Excel and other office productivity tools. The program uses slides to convey information rich in
multimedia. The term slide refers to the old slide projector, which this software effectively replaces.
PowerPoint was first developed by Dennis Austin and Thomas Rudkin at Forethought Inc. It was
supposed to be named Presenter, but the name was not adapted due to trademark issues. It was
renamed as PowerPoint in 1987 as suggested by Robert Gaskins. In August of 1987, Microsoft
bought Forethought for $14 million and turned it into its graphics business unit, where the company
continued to develop the software. The first iteration was launched together with Windows 3.0 in
1990. It only allowed slide progression in one direction - forward - and the amount of customization
was fairly limited.
PowerPoint experienced a very significant change in PowerPoint 97, which added predefined
transition effects and allowed the user to time them appropriately so that slides would transition
automatically. This allowed a presenter to follow a predefined progression and go on with the
presentation without pausing to change or read the slides.