WEBVTT

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How many of you have used
an electronic spreadsheet,

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like Microsoft Excel?

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Very good.

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Now, how many of you have run a business
with a spreadsheet by hand,

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like my dad did for his small
printing business in Philadelphia?

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A lot less.

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Well, that's the way iat was done
for hundreds of years.

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In early 1978,
I started working on an idea

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that eventually became VisiCalc.

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And the next year it shipped,

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running on something new
called an Apple II personal computer.

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You could tell that things
had really changed when, six years later,

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the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial

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that assumed you knew what VisiCalc was
and maybe even were using it.

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Steve Jobs back in 1990

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said that "spreadsheets
propelled the industry forward."

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"VisiCalc propelled the success of Apple
more than any other single event."

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On a more personal note,

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Steve said, "If VisiCalc had been written
for some other computer,

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you'd be interviewing
somebody else right now."

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So, VisiCalc was instrumental in getting
personal computers on business desks.

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How did it come about?

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What was it? What did I go through
to make it be what it was?

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Well, I first learned to program
back in 1966, when I was 15 --

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just a couple months
after this photo was taken.

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Few high schoolers had access
to computers in those days.

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But through luck
and an awful lot of perseverance,

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I was able to get
computer time around the city.

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After sleeping in the mud at Woodstock,
I went off to MIT to go to college,

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where to make money,
I worked on the Multics Project.

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Multics was a trailblazing
interactive time-sharing system.

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Have you heard of the Linux
and Unix operating systems?

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They came from Multics.

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I worked on the Multics versions

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of what are known
as interpreted computer languages,

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that are used by people
in noncomputer fields

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to do their calculations
while seated at a computer terminal.

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After I graduated from MIT,

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I went to work for
Digital Equipment Corporation.

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At DEC, I worked on software

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for the new area
of computerized typesetting.

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I helped newspapers
replace their reporters' typewriters

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with computer terminals.

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I'd write software

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and then I'd go out in the field
to places like the Kansas City Star,

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where I would train users
and get feedback.

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This was real-world experience

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that is quite different
than what I saw in the lab at MIT.

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After that, I was project leader

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of the software for DEC's first
word processor, again a new field.

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Like with typesetting, the important thing
was crafting a user interface

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that was both natural and efficient
for noncomputer people to use.

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After I was at DEC, I went
to work for a small company

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that made microprocessor-based electronic
cash registers for the fast-food industry.

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But I had always wanted to start
a company with my friend Bob Frankston

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that I met on the Multics project at MIT.

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So I decided to go back to school to learn
as much as I could about business.

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And in the fall of 1977,

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I entered the MBA program
at Harvard Business School.

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I was one of the few
percentage of students

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who had a background
in computer programming.

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There's a picture of me from the yearbook
sitting in the front row.

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(Laughter)

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Now, at Harvard,
we learned by the case method.

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We'd do about three cases a day.

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Cases consist of up to a few dozen pages

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describing a particular
business situation.

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They often have exhibits,
and exhibits often have words and numbers

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laid out in ways that make sense
for the particular situation.

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They're usually all somewhat different.

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Here's my homework.

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Again, numbers, words,
laid out in ways that made sense.

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Lots of calculations --
we got really close to our calculators.

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In fact, here's my calculator.

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For Halloween, I went
dressed up as a calculator.

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(Laughter)

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At the beginning of each class,
the professor would call on somebody

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to present the case.

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What they would do is
they would explain what was going on

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and then dictate information
that the professor would transcribe

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onto the many motorized blackboards
in the front of the class,

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and then we'd have a discussion.

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One of the really frustrating things
is when you've done all your homework,

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you come in the next day
only to find out that you made an error

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and all of the other numbers
you did were wrong.

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And you couldn't participate as well.

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And we were marked by class participation.

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So, sitting there with 87 other people
in the class, I got to daydream a lot.

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Most programmers in those days
worked on mainframes,

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building things like inventory systems,
payroll systems and bill-paying systems.

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But I had worked
on interactive word processing

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and on-demand personal computation.

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Instead of thinking
about paper printouts and punch cards,

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I imagined a magic blackboard

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that if you erased one number
and wrote a new thing in,

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all of the other numbers
would automatically change,

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like word processing with numbers.

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I imagined that my calculator
had mouse hardware on the bottom of it

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and a head-up display,
like in a fighter plane.

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And I could type some numbers in,
and circle it, and press the sum button.

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And right in the middle of a negotiation
I'd be able to get the answer.

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Now I just had to take my fantasy
and turn it into reality.

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My father taught me about prototyping.

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He showed me mock-ups

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that he'd make to figure out
the placement on the page

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for the things for brochures
that he was printing.

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And he'd use it
to get feedback from customers

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and OKs before he sent the job
off to the presses.

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The act of making a simple, working
version of what you're trying to build

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forces you to uncover key problems.

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And it lets you find solutions
to those problems much less expensively.

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So I decided to build a prototype.

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I went to a video terminal
connected to Harvard's time-sharing system

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and got to work.

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One of the first problems
that I ran into was:

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How do you represent values in formulas?

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Let me show you what I mean.

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I thought that you would point somewhere,

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type in some words,
then type in some somewhere else,

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put in some numbers and some more numbers,
point where you want the answer.

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And then point to the first, press minus,
point to the second,

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and get the result.

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The problem was:
What should I put in the formula?

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It had to be something
the computer knew what to put in.

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And if you looked at the formula,

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you needed to know
where on the screen it referred to.

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So the first thing I thought
was the programmer way of doing it.

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The first time you pointed to somewhere,

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the computer would ask you
to type in a unique name.

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It became pretty clear pretty fast
that that was going to be too tedious.

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The computer had to automatically
make up the name and put it inside.

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So I thought, why not make it be
the order in which you create them?

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I tried that. Value 1, value 2.

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Pretty quickly I saw
that if you had more than a few values

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you'd never remember
on the screen where things were.

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Then I said, why not instead
of allowing you to put values anywhere,

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I'll restrict you to a grid?

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Then when you pointed to a cell,

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the computer could put
the row and column in as a name.

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And, if I did it like a map and put ABC
across the top and numbers along the side,

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if you saw B7 in a formula,

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you'd know exactly
where it was on the screen.

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And if you had to type the formula
in yourself, you'd know what to do.

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Restricting you to a grid
helped solve my problem.

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It also opened up new capabilities,
like the ability to have ranges of cells.

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But it wasn't too restrictive --

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you could still put any value,
any formula, in any cell.

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And that's the way we do it to this day,
almost 40 years later.

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My friend Bob and I decided that we were
going to build this product together.

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I did more work figuring out exactly
how the program was supposed to behave.

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I wrote a reference card
to act as documentation.

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It also helped me ensure
that the user interface I was defining

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could be explained concisely
and clearly to regular people.

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Bob worked in the attic of the apartment
he rented in Arlington, Massachusetts.

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This is the inside of the attic.

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Bob bought time on the MIT Multics System

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to write computer code
on a terminal like this.

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And then he would download test versions
to a borrowed Apple II

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over a phone line
using an acoustic coupler,

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and then we would test.

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For one of these tests I prepared
for this case about the Pepsi Challenge.

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Print wasn't working yet,
so I had to copy everything down.

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Save wasn't working,
so every time it crashed,

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I had to type in all of the formulas
again, over and over again.

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The next day in class, I raised my hand;
I got called on, and I presented the case.

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I did five-year projections.
I did all sorts of different scenarios.

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I aced the case.
VisiCalc was already useful.

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The professor said, "How did you do it?"

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Well, I didn't want to tell him
about our secret program.

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(Laughter)

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So I said, "I took this and added this

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and multiplied by this
and subtracted that."

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He said, "Well,
why didn't you use a ratio?"

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I said, "Hah! A ratio --
that wouldn't have been as exact!"

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What I didn't say was,
"Divide isn't working yet."

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(Laughter)

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Eventually, though,
we did finish enough of VisiCalc

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to be able to show it to the public.

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My dad printed up a sample reference card

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that we could use as marketing material.

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In June of 1979, our publisher
announced VisiCalc to the world,

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in a small booth at the giant National
Computer Conference in New York City.

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The New York Times had
a humorous article about the conference.

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"The machines perform
what seem religious rites ...

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Even as the believers gather,

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the painters in the Coliseum sign room
are adding to the pantheon,

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carefully lettering 'VISICALC'
in giant black on yellow.

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All hail VISICALC!"

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(Gasp) New York Times:
"All hail VISICALC."

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(Laughter)

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That was the last mention
of the electronic spreadsheet

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in the popular business press
for about two years.

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Most people didn't get it yet.

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But some did.

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In October of 1979, we shipped VisiCalc.

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It came in packaging
that looked like this.

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And it looked like this,
running on the Apple II.

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And the rest, as they say, is history.

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Now, there's an awful lot
more to this story,

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but that'll have to wait for another day.

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One thing, though, Harvard remembers.

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Here's that classroom.

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They put up a plaque
to commemorate what happened there.

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(Applause)

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But it also serves as a reminder

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that you, too, should take
your unique backgrounds, skills and needs

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and build prototypes to discover
and work out the key problems,

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and through that, change the world.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)