windows 95 celebrates 20th birthday

Microsoft launched this product and changed this world 20 Years ago.

There were round-the-block lines and Jennifer Aniston made an hour-long instructional video for it. Twenty years ago, Microsoft launched Windows 95, and promptly changed the way we interact with our computers.

On Aug. 24, 1995, Microsoft—at that time a tech company with around $6 billion in sales and 17,800 employees—introduced their newest operating system, a product the New York Times at that time called “the splashiest, most frenzied, most expensive introduction of a computer product in the industry’s history.”

Windows 95 had a few notable add-ons, not least being the now-famous Start menu, a feature so significant that the company dedicated its launch ad to it.

Windows 95 also debuted the multi-tasking toolbar, the minimize-and-maximize window buttons and Internet Explorer, a browser that signaled the company’s intentions to dominate the nascent Internet sphere, as detailed in a famous Bill Gates-memo that same year.

The OS was a hit from the start, selling 7 million copies—at that time packaged in CDs and disks that cost $210 per box—in the first seven weeksalone. It would sell 40 million units in its first year.