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Meet the inventor of the electronic spreadsheet

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    How many of you have used
    an electronic spreadsheet,
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    like Microsoft Excel?
    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 it was done
    for hundreds of years.
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    In early 1978, I started working
    on an idea that eventually became VisiCalc.
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    And the next year it shipped
    running on something new
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    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 said that
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    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 that 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? What was it?
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    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 the MIT to go to college,
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    where to make money,
    I worked on the Multics Project.
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    Now Multics was a trailblazing
    interactive time-sharing system.
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    Have you heard of the
    Lenix ad 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 non-computer 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 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
    and then I'd go out in the field
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    to places like the Kansas City Star where
    I would train users and get feedback.
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    Now this was real world experience
    that is quite different
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    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 non-computer 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, I entered the
    MBA program at Harvard Business School.
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    I was one of a few students 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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    Now at Harvard,
    we learned by the case method.
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    We do about three cases a day.
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    Cases consist of up to a few dozen pages
    describing particular business situations.
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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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    There 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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    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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    The frustrating thing is when
    you've done all of 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 print outs 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
    that he'd make
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    to figure out the placement
    on the page
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    for the things for the brochures
    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,
    type in some words,
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    then type in somewhere else,
    and put in some numbers
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    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, 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 what knew 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.
    Pretty quickly I saw that if you had more
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    than a few values, 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?
    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, you'd know
    exactly where it was on the screen.
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    If you had to type the formula 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, Massachusettes.
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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 over a phone line
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    using an acoustic coupler
    and then we would test.
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    Now, 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, so I said,
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    well I took this and added this 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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    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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    Eventually, though, we did finish
    enough of VisiCalc to be able
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    to show it to the public.
    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, in a small booth
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    at the giant National Computer Conference
    in New York City.
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    Now 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,
    the painters in the Colosseum sign room
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    are adding to the Pantheon,
    carefully lettering VisiCalc
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    in giant black on yellow.
    All Hail Visicalc.
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    (Gasp) New York Times.
    All Hail VisiCalc.
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    That was the last mention of
    the electronic spreadsheet in
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    the popular business press
    for about two years.
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    Most people didn't get it yet.
    But some did.
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    In October of 1979, we shipped VisiCalc.
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    It came in a 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.
    Here's that classroom.
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    They put up a plaque to commemorate
    what happened there. (Applause)
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    But it also serves as a reminder --
    that you too should take
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    your unique background, skills and needs
    and build prototypes to discover
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    and work out the key problems
    and through that change the world.
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    Thank you.
Title:
Meet the inventor of the electronic spreadsheet
Speaker:
Dan Bricklin
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
12:00

English subtitles

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