Windows 95 Released

Midnight, 24 August 1995. Around the world, queues had formed outside electronics retailers for the midnight launch. Chicago, London, Tokyo. In Akihabara, thousands lined up in front of the LAOX store; Japanese TV news ran live coverage.

The night is often called the moment the PC became a household appliance.

What Changed

Technically, Windows 95 sat between Windows 3.1 and Windows NT: protected-mode 32-bit code, preemptive multitasking, long file names (no more 8.3), Plug and Play hardware detection.

But it was not those technical advances that put people in the queue. It was that Microsoft, for the first time, sold Windows in a form that looked interesting to people who were not personal-computer enthusiasts.

• A vivid blue-sky-and-clouds desktop wallpaper
• The Start menu in the lower left, the taskbar beside it
• An orchestral startup sound, composed by Brian Eno
• Three icons: the Recycle Bin, My Computer, Network Neighborhood

For the next twenty years, no matter how Windows evolved, these would remain the core of what 'Windows' looked like.

"Start Me Up"

Microsoft reportedly bought the rights to use the Rolling Stones' 1981 Start Me Up directly from Mick Jagger for use in the Windows 95 campaign. The exact figure has never been confirmed, but it was widely reported as extraordinary for an advertising licence in popular music at the time.

The message was direct: press 'Start' and an OS begins. Building a software launch around the catalog of a world-touring rock band was, for the IT industry, simply not done.

It was the first software-launch campaign run on the budget and the playbook of cars and perfume.

Internet Explorer

Windows 95 did not, at launch, come with Internet Explorer. Several months later, IE 1.0 appeared in the paid 'Plus! Pack' add-on.

A year later, with Windows 95 OSR2 (1996), IE 3.0 was bundled by default. Ahead lay the bitter contest between Microsoft and Netscape, and the 1998 United States antitrust action that would dominate the next decade. Windows 95 was the starting line of a ten-year legal struggle over the relationship of operating system and web browser.

Seven Million

Windows 95 sold seven million copies worldwide in its first week. Forty million in the first month. More than a hundred million by the end of 1996.

No paid software had ever shipped on that scale before. From the August 1995 release through Microsoft's 1999 peak, the share price multiplied roughly tenfold. Bill Gates would hold the top spot on Forbes' world wealth list almost continuously from 1995 through 2007.

The origin was a line of people in the dark, outside a retail store.