Witness

In August 1995, Microsoft released a new operating system - Windows 95 – following one of the computer industry’s biggest and most expensive marketing campaigns. Queues formed outside shops at midnight as people around the world waited to be among the first to buy it. The new software was designed to be more user friendly, easier to understand and aimed at ordinary people not professional programmers. Connecting to the internet would also be more straightforward. More than 40 million CD Rom copies were sold in the first year, introducing a boom in personal home computing. Sarah Leary who demonstrated the software on launch day – alongside Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and US talk show host Jay Leno – talks to Jane Wilkinson. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine