A Twitter user named Lucas Brooks discovered a surprise Easter egg in Windows 1.0, a windows version first introduced 37 years ago, back in November 1985.
Easter eggs hidden inside the software are secret responses that occur as a result of an undocumented set of commands. The results can vary from a simple printed message or image to a page of programmer credits or even a small video game hidden inside an otherwise serious piece of software. Given that this one took 37 years to uncover shows that it was carefully concealed, hence the “Congrats!” message that came along with it.
According to Brooks, the hidden dialog was placed in an encrypted format at the end of the smiley bitmap file that came with the operating system. Since back in 1985, there weren’t actually any tools that could help uncover such kind of well-concealed data, hence, it took nearly 37 years to unveil this secret.
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Which version of @Windows is the first to include Easter eggs? Windows 3.0? Nope. What if I tell you there is an Easter egg in Windows 1.0 RTM? This is what I have recently discovered: pic.twitter.com/dbfcv4r7jj
— Lucas Brooks (@mswin_bat) March 18, 2022
The secret message, in this easter egg, shows a list of the developers who worked on Windows 1.0, though it’s not a part of the software that you can find through conventional means. One of the most striking of these names is Gabe Newell, now the president at Valve Software, an American video game developer, publisher, and digital game distribution company. Newell worked at Microsoft from 1983 to 1996, after which he separated from the company to launch Valve.
Brooks, after this easter egg, found another one in Windows 2.0 that contained similar information. Android has included easter eggs for years, which you can find through the About Phone page in settings. They can be found in lots of other Google products too, try typing “askew” into the Google search bar and see what happens.
