<P> The first version of Microsoft Word was developed by Charles Simonyi and Richard Brodie, former Xerox programmers hired by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1981 . Both programmers worked on Xerox Bravo, the first WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processor . The first Word version, Word 1.0, was released in October 1983 for Xenix and MS - DOS; it was followed by four very similar versions that were not very successful . The first Windows version was released in 1989, with a slightly improved interface . When Windows 3.0 was released in 1990, Word became a huge commercial success . Word for Windows 1.0 was followed by Word 2.0 in 1991 and Word 6.0 in 1993 . Then it was renamed to Word 95 and Word 97, Word 2000 and Word for Office XP (to follow Windows commercial names). With the release of Word 2003, the numbering was again year - based . Since then, Word 2007, Word 2010, Word 2013, and most recently, Word 2016 have been released for Windows . </P> <P> In 1986, an agreement between Atari and Microsoft brought Word to the Atari ST . The Atari ST version was a translation of Word 1.05 for the Apple Macintosh; however, it was released under the name Microsoft Write (the name of the word processor included with Windows during the 80s and early 90s). Unlike other versions of Word, the Atari version was a one time release with no future updates or revisions . The release of Microsoft Write was one of two major PC applications that were released for the Atari ST (the other application being WordPerfect). Microsoft Write was released for the Atari ST in 1988 . </P>

When was the first version of word released