The real reason why old computers had Solitaire and Minesweeper is both surprising and obvious

You think this is a game?

Anyone over the age of 15 probably remembers a time that one of the main functions of a PC was to let people play Solitaire without having to shuffle and deal a deck of cards themselves. One of the other most important features of the earlier Windows operating systems was Minesweeper. We imagine that up until now, most people thought that these applications were installed simply for the users' entertainment. Not so, apparently. Solitaire was Microsoft's clever way of teaching people how to use a mouse, by forcing players to learn how to drag-and-drop quickly. The reasoning behind Minesweeper was similar. This strategy game was designed to teach computer-users to right-click and left-click quickly and efficiently. Learning is much more fun when you don't know you're learning.