Bliss (Windows XP wallpaper)

Bliss is the green hill under a blue sky that greeted every new Windows XP computer. Charles O'Rear, a former National Geographic photographer, took it in January 1996 near the Napa–Sonoma county line in California, and says it was not digitally manipulated.

It began as a stock photo called Bucolic Green Hills. Microsoft acquired the rights and made it the default wallpaper of Windows XP in 2001, putting it on hundreds of millions of screens in homes, offices, schools and internet cafés.

It has been described as possibly the most viewed photograph ever taken. The hill itself has since been planted with vineyards, so the view only exists in the picture.

Windows XP was retired in 2014, but Bliss remains instantly recognisable. The hill now looks different, so the green of 1996 survives only on old screens and in memory.