Comment DOS 1.1x was significant (Score 1) 224
The really interesting thing about DOS 1.1 (or actually very slightly later revisions) is that it was the first to be released to OEMs other than IBM. Early clone makers such as Zenith, Corona, Columbia Data Products, Eagle Computers, or Compaq (you might have heard of that last one), never would have gotten off the ground if Microsoft had not licensed it out to them.
Some of the early "MS-DOS" compatibles were not even hardware compatible with the IBM PC. All you could rely on was the presence of an 8088/8086 and MS-DOS provided I/O calls. And those OEMs had to customize MS-DOS to recognize their proprietary hardware.
I'm not so sure about the value of Word for Windows 1.x. It wasn't even the first word processor for Windows (Beaten by AMI and PageMaker).
Now, on the other hand I have heard some interesting things about the internals of Word 1.00 for DOS.