In 1987,
Thomas Knoll, a PhD student at the
University of Michigan began writing a program on his
Macintosh Plus to display
grayscale images on a monochrome display. This program, called Display, caught the attention of his brother
John Knoll, an
Industrial Light & Magic employee, who recommended Thomas turn it into a fully-fledged image editing program. Thomas took a six month break from his studies in 1988 to collaborate with his brother on the program, which had been renamed ImagePro.
[3] Later that year, Thomas renamed his program Photoshop and worked out a short-term deal with scanner manufacturer Barneyscan to distribute copies of the program with a slide scanner; a "total of about 200 copies of Photoshop were shipped" this way.
LOL! How did they do that?