Peter Pathe Preps Microsoft Departure
After 25 years with the company, he's getting ready to retire and this Microsoft Press Pass Q&A shows off what he's done for the Big M. For one thing, ubiquitous Microsoft Word was Pathe's baby for 15 years.
Fun facts: Word started out--as so many successful products did-- at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. There it was known as "Bravo."
(Note to Microsoft, it's XEROX, not IBM PARC.)
Charles Simonyi brought Bravo to Microsoft in 1981. And, "while many credit Simonyi as the 'Father of Word,' Microsoft Corporate Vice President Peter Pathe has been the program's legal guardian throughout the Windows Era."
And my fave from Pathe's answers:
Some dinosaurs in the press corps (cough) even remember Pathe's first foray at Microsoft. He was Mr. TrueType. TrueType was Microsoft's font (fontal?) assault on Adobe's font stranglehold.
Since then Pathe's been a big force behind Word, the de facto word processing standard. A spokeswoman reminds that Word is now 18 years old! Yes: if it were a person it could vote. Some remember being forced off Xywrite for Word. (cough, cough.)
Word did to Xywrite and WordPerfect what Windows did to OS/2. And Excel to 1-2-3. And. . . . well you get the picture.
:Pathe's purview has since included InfoPath, OneNote and the "authoring apps," says Microsoft.