9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
How many of you have used[br]an electronic spreadsheet,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
like Microsoft Excel?[br]Very good.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now how many of you have run a business[br]with a spreadsheet by hand,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
like my dad did for his small[br]printing business in Philadelphia?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
A lot less. Well, that's the way[br]it was done for hundreds of years.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In early 1978, I started working[br]on an idea that eventually became VisiCalc.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the next year it shipped[br]running on something new

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
called an Apple II Personal Computer.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You could tell that things[br]had really changed when six years later,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial[br]that assumed you knew what VisiCalc was

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and maybe even were using it.[br]Steve Jobs back in 1990 said that

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
spreadsheets propelled[br]the industry forward.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
VisiCalc propelled the success of Apple[br]more than any other single event.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
On a more personal note, Steve said[br]that if VisiCalc had been written

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
for some other computer,[br]you'd be interviewing

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
somebody else right now.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So, VisiCalc was instrumental in getting[br]personal computers on business desks.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
How did it come about? What was it?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
What did I go through[br]to make it be what it was?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Well, I first learned to program[br]back in 1966, when I was 15 --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
just a couple months after[br]this photo was taken.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Few high schoolers had access[br]to computers in those days

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but through luck[br]and an awful lot of perseverance,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I was able to get[br]computer time around the city.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
After sleeping in the mud at Woodstock,[br]I went off the MIT to go to college,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
where to make money,[br]I worked on the Multics Project.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now Multics was a trailblazing[br]interactive time-sharing system.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Have you heard of the[br]Lenix ad Unix operating systems?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They came from Multics.[br]I worked on the Multics versions

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of what are known as[br]interpreted computer languages,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that are used by people[br]in non-computer fields

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to do their calculations while seated[br]at a computer terminal.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
After I graduated from MIT,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I went to work for[br]Digital Equipment Corporation.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
At DEC, I worked on software for[br]the new area of computerized typesetting.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I helped newspapers replace[br]their reporters' typewriters

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
with computer terminals.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I'd write software[br]and then I'd go out in the field

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to places like the Kansas City Star where[br]I would train users and get feedback.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now this was real world experience[br]that was quite different

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
from what I saw in the lab at MIT.