PowerPoint co-creator Dennis Austin, passes away at 76

The co-creator of PowerPoint, Dennis Austin, passed away on September 1 at the age of 76 in Los Altos, California, where he lived. His son, Michael Austin, confirmed to the media that his father had lung cancer that had spread to his brain.

More on Austin 

Before joining the software company Forethought as a software developer and co-creating PowerPoint, Austin had studied engineering at a number of universities, including MIT and UC Santa Barbara.

Sources claim that once the company debuted the program in 1987, Microsoft quickly acquired it for $14 million. From 1985 until his retirement in 1996, Austin served as the principal developer of PowerPoint.

Austin and his prowesses

Robert Gaskins, the Forethought executive who developed the program, collaborated with Austin. He used to make PowerPoint simple to use as a software engineer.

With a direct manipulation interface, he claimed to have achieved this, which means that “what you are editing looks exactly like the final product.”

The objective was aimed at creating presentations, not simply slides.

Dennis came up with at least half of the major design ideas, according to Gaskins, who also claimed that he was completely responsible for the fluid performance and the polished finish of the implementation, in his book “Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint.”