Richard Brodie (programmer)

Richard Brodie, born November 10, 1959 in Newton, Massachusetts, is an American computer programmer and author who wrote the first version of Microsoft Word. After two years at Harvard College he left to join Xerox's Advanced Systems Division in Palo Alto, where he helped develop the Bravo word processor for the Alto and was mentored by Charles Simonyi, who brought him to Microsoft in 1981 as its 77th employee. He wrote the first Word in under seven months, along with Microsoft's first C compiler and the original Notepad. As technical assistant to Bill Gates from 1983 he managed the project released as Word for Windows, and the article credits him with the ideas of the combo box, the ribbon and the automatic red spelling underline. He later led the project released as Microsoft Access in 1992, left Microsoft in 1994, and wrote the self-help books Getting Past OK and Virus of the Mind.