The familiar sight of fish swimming across a computer screen, a staple for many early Windows users, owes its existence to a dentist's office. Ed Fries, a co-founder of After Dark and former Microsoft VP of Game Publishing, shared the unlikely origin story in a recent interview.
According to Fries, the screensaver began when an artist he was working with needed an aquarium for a scene set in a dentist's office, a common feature in such waiting rooms. The artist inquired if it would be possible to have a small section of the screen dedicated to moving fish. Fries, then a video game programmer, agreed to make the fish animate if provided with the necessary assets.
He initially created a looping animation of small fish and later requested larger fish characters to pursue a more ambitious concept. Over one late night at the office, Fries transformed his entire screen into a virtual aquarium. This early version consisted of static fish images with animated parentheses to simulate water movement and 'o' characters for bubbles.
The screensaver quickly gained popularity among Fries' colleagues at Microsoft. He recounted how people in the office would request copies, and soon the animation was visible on numerous computers. Fries described this as the beginning of his "fish phase." This project eventually led to the widely recognized After Dark fish screensaver that became synonymous with the early days of Windows. Fries later developed a Mac version at the request of a co-worker on the Microsoft Word team. This co-worker also created a fish editor, allowing users to customize their aquatic displays. Fries noted that this was part of a clandestine group at Microsoft known as "bogus software," dedicated to creating unofficial and often whimsical applications.