Microsoft Windows 95 Launch Event (1995)

This is the full recording of the event at which Microsoft launched Windows 95 on August 24, 1995, with Jay Leno hosting and Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer on stage. Windows 95 brought the Start button and taskbar, two ideas still sitting at the bottom of every Windows screen more than thirty years later. It also marks the day an operating system became a consumer event, with people lining up outside stores to buy one. Be warned that Leno's material has aged badly; skip ahead to Gates and the demos if you are watching for the software rather than the period atmosphere, which is a time capsule in its own right.