WEBVTT

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
How many of you have used
an electronic spreadsheet,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
like Microsoft Excel?
Very good.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Now how many of you have run a business
with a spreadsheet by hand,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
like my dad did for his small
printing business in Philadelphia?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
A lot less. Well, that's the way
it was done for hundreds of years.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
In early 1978, I started working
on an idea that eventually became VisiCalc.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And the next year it shipped
running on something new

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
called an Apple II Personal Computer.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
You could tell that things
had really changed when six years later,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial
that assumed you knew what VisiCalc was

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and maybe even were using it.
Steve Jobs back in 1990 said that

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
spreadsheets propelled
the industry forward.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
VisiCalc propelled the success of Apple
more than any other single event.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
On a more personal note, Steve said
that if VisiCalc had been written

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
for some other computer,
you'd be interviewing

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
somebody else right now.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So, VisiCalc was instrumental in getting
personal computers on business desks.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
How did it come about? What was it?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
What did I go through
to make it be what it was?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Well, I first learned to program
back in 1966, when I was 15 --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
just a couple months after
this photo was taken.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Few high schoolers had access
to computers in those days

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but through luck
and an awful lot of perseverance,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I was able to get
computer time around the city.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
After sleeping in the mud at Woodstock,
I went off the MIT to go to college,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
where to make money,
I worked on the Multics Project.