Meet the inventor of the electronic spreadsheet

How many of you have used
an electronic spreadsheet,

like Microsoft Excel?
Very good.

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

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

A lot less. Well, that's the way
it was done for hundreds of years.

In early 1978, I started working
on an idea that eventually became VisiCalc.

And the next year it shipped
running on something new

called an Apple II Personal Computer.

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

the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial
that assumed you knew what VisiCalc was

and maybe even were using it.
Steve Jobs back in 1990 said that

spreadsheets propelled
the industry forward.

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

On a more personal note, Steve said
that if VisiCalc had been written

for some other computer,
you'd be interviewing

somebody else right now.

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

How did it come about? What was it?

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

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

just a couple months after
this photo was taken.

Few high schoolers had access
to computers in those days

but through luck
and an awful lot of perseverance,

I was able to get
computer time around the city.

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

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

Now Multics was a trailblazing
interactive time-sharing system.

Have you heard of the
Lenix ad Unix operating systems?

They came from Multics.
I worked on the Multics versions

of what are known as
interpreted computer languages,

that are used by people
in non-computer fields

to do their calculations while seated
at a computer terminal.

After I graduated from MIT,

I went to work for
Digital Equipment Corporation.

At DEC, I worked on software for
the new area of computerized typesetting.

I helped newspapers replace
their reporters' typewriters

with computer terminals.

I'd write software
and then I'd go out in the field

to places like the Kansas City Star where
I would train users and get feedback.

Now this was real world experience
that is quite different

than what I saw in the lab at MIT.
After that, I was project leader

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

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

both natural and efficient
for non-computer people to use.

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

microprocessor based electronic
cash registers for the fast food industry.

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

that I met on the Multics project at MIT.

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

And in the Fall of 1977, I entered the
MBA program at Harvard Business School.

I was one of a few students who
had a background in computer programming.

There's a picture of me from the yearbook
sitting in the front row. Now at Harvard,

we learned by the case method.
we do about three cases a day.

Cases consist of up to a few dozen pages
describing a particular business situation.

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

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

There usually all somewhat different.
Here's my homework.

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

Lots of calculations.
We got really close to our calculators.

In fact, here's my calculator.

For Halloween, I went
dressed up as a calculator.

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

to present the case.

What they would do, is they would explain
what was going on and then dictate

information that the professor
would transcribe onto the mini

motorized blackboard
in the front of the class

and then we'd have a discussion.

The frustrating thing is when
you've done all of your homework,

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

of the other numbers you did were wrong,
and you couldn't participate as well.

And we were marked by class participation.

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

Most programmers in those days worked on
mainframes, building things like

inventory systems and payroll systems
and bill paying systems, but I had worked

on interactive word processing
and on-demand personal computation.

Instead of thinking about
paper print outs and punch cards,

I imagined a magic blackboard
that if you erased one number

and wrote a new thing in,
all of the other numbers

would automatically change,
like word processing with numbers.

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

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

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

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

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

My father taught me about prototyping.

He showed me mock-ups
that he'd make to figure out the placement

on the page for the things for brochures
that he was printing.

And he'd use it to get feedback
from customers and okays before

he sent the job off to the presses.

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

forces you to uncover key problems.

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

So I decided to build a prototype.
I went to a video terminal connected to

Harvard's time-sharing system
and got to work.

One of the first problems
that I ran into was:

how do you represent values in formulas?

Let me show you what I mean.

I thought that you would point somewhere,
type in some words,

then type in somewhere else,
and put in some numbers

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

And then point to the first, press minus;
point to the second, and get the result.

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

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

and if you looked at the formula,
you needed to know

where on the screen it referred to.

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

the first time you pointed to somewhere,
the computer would ask you

to type in a unique name.
It became pretty clear, pretty fast that

that was going to be too tedious.

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

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

I tried that. Value 1, Value 2.
Pretty quickly I saw that if you had more

than a few values, you'd never remember
on the screen where things were.

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

I'll restrict you to a grid?
Then when you pointed to a cell,

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

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

if you saw B7 in a formula, you'd know
exactly where it was on the screen.

If you had to type the formula yourself,
you'd know what to do.

Restricting you to a grid
helped solve my problem.:

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

But it wasn't too restrictive --

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

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

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

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

I wrote a reference card
to act as documentation.

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

could be explained concisely and clearly
to regular people.

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

This is the inside of the attic.

Bob bought time on the MIT Multics System
to write computer code

on a terminal like this.

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

using an acoustic coupler
and then we would test.

Now, for one of these tests I prepared
for this case about the Pepsi challenge.

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

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

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

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

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

I aced the case.
VisiCalc was already useful.

The professor said, how did you do it?

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

well I took this and added this and
multiplied by this and subtracted that.

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

Hah! A ratio that wouldn't
have been as exact.

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

Eventually, though, we did finish
enough of VisiCalc to be able

to show it to the public.
My dad printed up a sample reference card

that we could use as marketing material.

In June of 1979, our publisher announced
VisiCalc to the world, in a small booth

at the giant National Computer Conference
in New York City.

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

"The machines perform what seem
religious rites...

even as the believers gather,
the painters in the Colosseum sign room

are adding to the Pantheon,
carefully lettering VisiCalc

in giant black on yellow.
All Hail Visicalc.

(Gasp) New York Times.
All Hail VisiCalc.

That was the last mention of
the electronic spreadsheet in

the popular business press
for about two years.

Most people didn't get it yet.
But some did.

In October of 1979, we shipped VisiCalc.

It came in a packaging
that looked like this,

and it looked like this
running on the Apple II.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

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

but that'll have to wait for another day.

One thing, though, Harvard remembers.
Here's that classroom.

They put up a plaque to commemorate
what happened there. (Applause)

But it also serves as a reminder --
that you too should take

your unique background, skills and needs
and build prototypes to discover

and work out the key problems
and through that change the world.

Thank you.