Today in 1987, Microsoft released Microsoft Bookshelf, a collection of ten popular reference publications.
It is the first application Microsoft released on a CD-ROM. All of the company’s previous software was released on 3½-inch or 5¼-inch floppy disks. The collection included: The American Heritage Dictionary, The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, and Roget’s Thesaurus.
In 1989, BYTE magazine called it “the first substantial application of CD-ROM technology" and "a harbinger of personal library systems to come." Microsoft Bookshelf was discontinued in 2000.