Lingvo history. Beaver

Digging up a Lingvo story is not an easy task: the program has hit for 21 years! It’s hard to find people who remember what Lingvo was like. Even our leading figures - the creators of ABBYY - remember far from all. You may not believe it, but some of the first versions of Lingvo seem to be lost forever! But the more interesting to dig: neither you nor we do not know what will end these excavations and what we will meet along the way.



The first thing that a young Lingvo archaeologist stumbles upon is always the happy and contented Lingvo Beaver.

The first mention of the beaver dates from the tenth version of Lingvo. It all started with the campaign of ABBYY Lingvo 10 under the slogan "Kill the beaver - save the tree" "Buy Lingvo - save the beaver". The idea was very "green": for the production of paper dictionaries need wood, and for the production of Lingvo - not needed. Beavers gnaw at this very forest, therefore, buying a Lingvo, you save beavers. The promo site included the links “Save the beaver” (buy an incomplete version) and “Save the beavers family” (buy the most complete version of Lingvo 10). The ad campaign was so successful that the beaver immediately became a symbol of Lingvo.



In the next version - ABBYY Lingvo 11 - the beaver was added to the program for learning the words ABBYY Lingvo Tutor. Beaver was happy when they answered correctly, and pined when the user was wrong:



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But the most interesting was in the other. When the happy owner of the new version of Lingvo opened the box with the program, he got this crazy device called “Multifunctional Communicator Bober-11”:





In fact, it was just a plastic clip for papers, which with the help of a velcro tape had to be attached to the corner of the monitor. But how many fun! The instruction attached to the communicator deserves special attention.



In the 12th version of Lingvo, the beaver teacher was somewhat transformed and received a pointer in his paws:



Well, in Lingvo x3 beaver can be found everywhere, for example, in the quick start guide, and even in the help for the program:



"... and he for the spanner for the key, and the wolf looks, he is generally cool." (c) V. Vysotsky



And now the bonuses!



Beavers in the office ABBYY:



Beaver's Lingvo Team:





And we also have a full-size beaver suit that can be put on and scare passersby. But passersby usually do not get scared of beaver, but have tender feelings for him:



Photos from the celebration of March 8 in ABBYY: lingvo-ru.livejournal.com/4475.html



PS This is a repost of our post from the lingvo team blog . In it you can find many more interesting things about ABBYY, lingvo, life of words and our employees)