The Story of VisiCalc
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 พ.ย. 2024
- In 1979 a small company released the world's first "killer app" for the then tiny personal computer market. VisiCalc was like nothing that had been seen before, the very first spreadsheet for personal computers. People bought a computer just to get VisiCalc and its sales skyrocketed, even after multiple price increases. Exclusively available on the Apple II for the first year on the market, its powerful sales made Apple Computer a front runner in the personal computer wars of the 1980s.
And then, after over a million copies had been sold across multiple computer platforms...VisiCalc faded from the computer scene and was ignominiously discontinued in 1985, after being bought out by the very company whose flagship product had killed it.
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#Visicalc #retrotechbytes #documentary
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I just happened across this. It was well done but a few corrections. The first is that the failure of negotiations with VisiCorp was the primary factor stymying the development of VisiCalc. I don't want to get into the details we could've easily reached an agreement had the investors in VisiCorp seen Software Arts as anything more than a disposable parts supplier. 'nuff said. The angered the VisiCalc product manager enough that he quit to do 1-2-3 which, in VisiCorp's hubris, they didn't think was possible.
QUick -
- Dan had been programming since the 60s, not 4 years.
- I didn't use an emulator -- I debugged on an Apple ][
- VAV was in a high-level (which we created) language for the IBM PC and we developed a compiler for fast execution. At that point, the RAM was still expensive so we were cautious about increasing the requirement.
- Dan and I were friends but never roommates
- VisiCalc shipped in October 1979 though betas were available sooner
First of all, thanks so much for watching, I really appreciate it! It's kind of crazy to me to think that one of legendary programmers of the personal computer revolution saw my little video and took the time to comment.
Secondly, I really appreciate your setting the record straight on things, and I have a couple followup questions just out of curiosity.
1.) What was your flow for debugging on the Apple II? Did you compile it on the timeshare system, transfer and make notes from the Apple II, fix and recompile on MULTICS, and then repeat? What debugger were you using(or were you even using one)? Or am I misunderstanding your clarification, and you in fact programmed all of VisiCalc directly on an Apple II?
2.) Exactly how much RAM could VisiCalc Advanced make use of?
@@AnotherBoringTopic I started out compiling on Multics and then debugging directly on the Apple ][. There was just the built-in debugger. I don't remember the details - just that it was very primitive. Later when we got a Prime I wrote an assembler and other tools. As an aside, I had written a 6502 emulator one weekend on Multics for another project but didn't use it for VisiCalc. BTW, there were no gotos in the assembler to make the code understandable -- just macros that became jumps but I know that I could safely trace the flow. The goal of VisiCalc was 16K but, in the end, it required 32K. [another aside, ADA was developed on the same Multics at the same time because it was cheaper to dial-in from France than use a system here].
VAV -- Not sure the requirements on the IBM PC -- maybe 128K.
As an FYI, I came up with Visible Calculator at Eggs on one. We never did use Calculedger or other names. The capital C was because my father had a company whose logo was Telematic with a stylized m that looked like a capital so intracaps made sense.
I appreciate your other histories -- I lived through them but your research fills in a lot of details I wasn't aware of though I knew many of the people.
@@BobFrTube I never knew VisiCalc was this influential. Without it, Apple could have been, easily, only a footnote in computer history.
@BobFrTube Thank you for posting here. To say that your software changed my life would be an understatement. I was 7 years old the first time I used VisiCalc. My dad was an electronics engineer working in broadcast television and brought home an Apple ][ with the intention of teaching himself to program. He was a master in hardware and assumed his mastery of electronics would easily transpose to software. In his disappointment, he handed me a three-hole punched folder with a xeroxed manual called “BASIC Step-by-Step” and told me if I could understand what was on those pages I’d be, quote, “smarter than your father.” VisiCalc gave me an understanding of logic flows and how number values affected each other like nothing before. I could model problems and their solutions in VisiCalc first to then architect what I would code. My computer knowledge made me a millionaire at age 17 and led to a lifelong career in technology. I say to you with genuine gratitude and great respect, VisiCalc was pivotal in my understanding, appreciation, and love for computing. Changing a value in a cell and seeing instantaneously how that change rippled through the matrix altered my whole way of thinking. All I can say to you now, in whatever humility I can muster at age 50, is THANK YOU. If VisiCalc had not turned on that lightbulb in my brain how it did and when it did, my whole wonderfully rewarding life quite likely would’ve been entirely different. I sincerely hope that makes you smile and fills you with a sense of satisfaction.
@@robertholtz we all stand on the shoulders of giants, but you sir, are one of them.. if you understood enough of that at 7, to develop yourself into a professional programmer and entrepreneur at 17, you must have been one of the brightest kids around.. Well done!
I remember using visicalc on my Apple II+ in 1983. I was 40 then. I used it to develop a spreadsheet to keep track of a rental house business. My son who was in Middle School used basic to build a graphic of beer filling and overflowing. Then my company equipped all staff with an IBM PC XT in 1984. It had a huge 10 meg disc drive (!) and had Lotus 123 and pfs write loaded. I’m now 80 and have just re equipped with M2 MacBook Air linked to Apple Studio. I am lucky to have experienced such incredible change.
The Apple IIc was released on 24 April 1984.
@@TheOtherSteel actually, thinking back and after seeing a pic of the IIC I think we had a II+ . It had the sloping k/b and flat top for the monitor to sit on.
@@TheOtherSteel seriously, you spend your time splitting short hairs with 80 year olds trying to share knowledge with others. Pitiful human.
Fascinating contrast of a 40 year period of time, thanks.
My father is now 83 and I remember experiencing visicalc with him on an Apple II when I was in high school (graduated in 1983). He continued to use Apple computers....through a Lisa to up until current models.
Who else used to read BYTE magazine cover to cover every month in the 80s? I remember seeing the ads for all these new programs.
I was way too young to read Byte in the 80s, however I love reading back issues of it, preferably physical. There is just something deeply satisfying about flipping through hundreds of pages of glossy articles, product reviews, advertisements, and excitement for the future that still resonates with me decades later. I have been buying back issues of Byte off and on for a number of years (I'm only up to a couple dozen issues), but it's been hard to find decent sized lots for a reasonable price.
After I bought an Apple ][ + and started to teach myself to use it my goto was Byte and A.P.P.L.E. Then only two columns I could even figure out to start with was Steve C. Circuit Cellar and Jerry Pournelle's user column. But more and more of it made sense as time went on. Loved that software piracy cover.
I was more into Creative Computing, but sure Byte too. Dr. Dobb's Journal. Had a subscription to a monthly cassette tape with new Commodore PET/CBM software.
Soon there would be countless machine-specific magazines, and one or more local trade mags in any big city (newsprint and even more ads than Byte).
I read Byte, PC Magazine and later Chips during early to late 80's. I still remember PC's limited was sued by IBM then changed its brand name to Dell.
Me...me...me! 👋
I was introduced to VisiCalc, not on an Apple platform but on an HP desktop unit. It had a small CRT and the program was loaded from a micro cassette. I became a hero in the company by being able to recast the income statement and balance sheet in minutes rather than an afternoon of redoing calculations on a pair of huge paper spreadsheets. This was in 1979.
I did not see the use of the pc until the spreadsheet software came along. It opened my eyes to the world of computers.
Perhaps the most interesting, and untold part of this story is the fact that Frankston never wanted to patent Visicalc, but wanted it to be what we would now know as open-source. I spoke with him many years ago while developing a intuitive (mouse driven) spreadsheet for primary age students, and was so surprised at how he was willing to help and shared his concerns with the clumsy navigation procs used in the 70's. A humble visionary with an incredible legacy. Thank you Bob.
I think a lot of industry leaders though BASIC programming would serve as an informal sort of "open source ecology" People would share and trade programs in BASIC, while "serious" commercial software would be written in assembly or C, and cost hundreds of dollars per software title. And a lot of software did, in the time of mainframes. Incompatible BASIC on the large variety of different platforms made that impractical, and startup software companies needed stronger protections to compete with tech giants, and people needed stronger rules to keep their free software "Open Source". I think the open source licenses will need even more legal protections in the future, the fight isn't over.
Excel was internally called the Buddha project because it would assume the Lotus position.
I remember hearing a radio ad for VisiCalc.
They sang "Let's get VisiCalc, VisiCalc, I wanta get VisiCalc."
To the tune of "Let's get physical."
Yes, there where actual commercials for a spreadsheet program on AM radio.
HAHA 'good song.
Sure turns me on, Guess though my girl loves it more.. 'Let's get VISICALC!'🍷 😜
I was working as a young mainframe programmer in 1979... I had a new TRS-80 Model 1 and bought VisiCalc as soon as it came out. I was blown away by the possibilities with it and knew it was going to change everything. It really is the app that moved the computer out of the land of us nerds and into the mainstream. Fortunately, I didn't let that realization intimidate me to leave software development for another career... I would have missed out on a very rewarding career.
Brilliant video and some awesome comments 😀. In the late 70’s I started work in the accounts department for a company which provided training for IBM mainframes. In early 80 my boss bought me an apple II with visicalc (and lemonade), -up until then we had used Wilson jones columner pads. This revolutionized the way we worked and I was the only one who embraced the new tech was good for my career. We had a visit from some IBM senior executives and my boss pointedly brought them past my workspace to show them how I had prepared the budgets on an apple. Shortly afterwards IBM went ahead with their PC. I like to think we played a small role in this 😊.
1982 was when I created a spreadsheet in Visicalc on an Apple II to do heating and cooling calculations for small buildings. We had one Apple II in the building, down with the IT big-iron nerds who weren't yet doing much with it. These calculations were typically done by hand on a fill-in-the-blank form created by trade organizations. Many values were looked up from tables, much simple arithmetic, and some estimation. It became easier to what-if changes in insulation in walls, window transmission of heat, etc. It was my first actual work done using a PC and 4 years before I bought my first Mac.
What a perfect use for it!
I think something overlooked in this video is that spreadsheets is what put PCs on the manager's desks. If all they did was word processing, they would have been given to the secretaries. But dealing with financial stuff is what the "big dogs" did, so they got a computer, even if it was kinda ugly and out of place in the office.
Pcs were too expensive for secretarial work in any case at the time. The return on investment naturally put them where they made the most financial gain.
No, I think he makes a fair point considering how averse to that sort of technology accounts, management and admin folks used to be prior to the popularity of the office computers owing to the learning curve and general mistrust in the machines that would naturally take most of their jobs away! 🍷
@@Disappointed739 Do you know what a Wang word processor cost? About twice the price of a PC system and then there were the subscription and maintenance cost.
Word processing was also one of the primary reasons why people bought a computer; simply because it was easier to edit text, fix mistakes with a spell-checker, then have a neatly-formatted print-out, and then have a very compact way to transport data that was the equivalent of reams of printed paper.
Word processing was important to anyone who wrote documentation, legal documents, papers and dissertations.
Word processing and spreadsheet programs did the things that the other could not.
Yet VisiCalc was _the_ need-to-have app for anyone who needed to make complex calculations quickly, and that meant all businesses and most industries. Then 1-2-3, Quattro Pro, and Excel.
The main programs in the eighties were 1-2-3, WordPerfect, dBASE III, and NetWare to unite them all into one more-or-less coherent business combo.
@@mardus_ee Yes, for individuals. For business, typing was done by secretaries who worked from dictation - either recorded or via shorthand. Word processing just made the secretary more efficient. But it was spreadsheet applications that put the computer on the boss's desk as a management tool.
I bought my first IBM PC system in the early 1980’s primarily for VisiCalc ( cost over $5,000 in 1980 dollars). It was a game changer for accountants creating spreadsheets. Electronic calculators, VisiCalc and TurboTax were significant improvements in my 45 years as an accountant.
I remember having spreadsheets so large running on an XT with 1-2-3 that you could hit f9 and go have a cup of coffee hoping it would be done. But so much better than accounting pads and pencils.
It's cool to see how it all started. When I was a kid in the early 1980s, I used to pour over the Radio Shack catalog, learning specs of audio equipment and buzzwords for computers. The one buzzword was "what-if calculations". I was chosen to participate in a new after school program to use Apple II computers and learned Applesoft BASIC. When I was a teen, I took a vocational class during the summer that used Apple II's, but they had the Z80 card. We learned CP/M, Wordstar, dBase II and SuperCalc. I didn't see the value in it at the time, but two years later, my brother bought a PC compatible and what I learned in that class translated very well, especially CP/M and SuperCalc. My first real job was as a admin assistant and knowing DOS and spreadsheets got me that job. That job lead to my first IT job and it all started with the Radio Shack catalogs and their "what-if calculations."
What did you “…pour over…” the catalog? Coffee? I’m sure you meant “…pore over…”.🤔
My story is quite nearly the same, the catalogs, knowing DOS, TRS-DOS, at that same time. It lead me to programming in Basic and making databases for the customers. At that time, I had no idea what the "what-if" part of it was and their ad copy never really explained what that meant: and who as work asks that question? Had they marketed it as a programmable alpha-numeric calculator and DIY database....
@@c17nav tbh either sounds kinda dumb. English is funny.
@@SeeJayPlayGames English is three languages (Old German, Old French and Old Norse) mashed together, simplified and then had a lot of words added from other languages.
VisiCalc revolutionized our company’s budget approval process in 1982. Previously several days work tweaking numerous production yields and variables with senior Head Office management, each ‘small’ tweak resulting in hours of recalculation. I was in a division of a major company and thought I would stick my neck out and put the budget on VisiCalc (on an Osborne ‘portable’ computer). The MD was so impressed he ordered that VisiCalc become the company-wide standard for budgets and forecasts.
I was told the corporate office needed help in putting the yearly budget together in 1982 and I could work all the overtime I wanted. Corporate was about 60 miles away and they immediately started talking about why that country bumpkin was there. There were plenty of Apple IIs and calculators with long runs of calculating tape visible. I input the numbers for the first unit I was given and heard more complaints about how slow the country bumpkin was. I had noticed the totals did not show when I input the data and being that I was not very welcome, I did the formulas for the totals and replicated them. When I finally presented my results, they first said about time, then they realized my data had totals. I then understood the need for all the calculators. They were really just using the VisiCalc for presentation purposes and manually calculating and imputing all the data. After hundreds of hours of overtime and many exhausted people, they started using my templates and quickly completed the budget project. The next year the budget only required 10 hours of overtime and that was due to the next bottleneck in computing, the printer. Fortunately, I left soon after that and ending up being the Senior Financial Analyst of a Technical and Process computing group that appreciated bumpkins.
Mid-teens, a Franklin ACE 1000, and the green glow of VisiCalc on the screen for hours. This was the birth of my fascination for what was possible with computers. Sure, I had learned Basic with a TRS80 and magnetic tape storage before that. But that was just fiddling about at age 14 writing my first graphical programs.
VisiCalc was magical to a 16 year old in the late 70’s and early 80’s. So many memories this video is bringing back.❣️
Other than the ACE 1000-- that's my bio to a T, same years, same age.
I remember seeing my first spreadsheet sometime in mid to late 70s, was probably on Apple II. I was European marketing manager for part of US multinational. 7 countries, 5 or 6 different currencies, probably 10 different product lines. Had to do budgets, forecasts, etc. all summing to a dollar amount in lower right hand corner. I was not yet a father, but would have almost seriously considered giving up my first born child for that software. Later used a spreadsheet to do business plan for business we were starting. Pretty complicated. When I hit recalc I would go make myself a cup of coffee and await the result. Spreadsheets built the PC business. Bravo to all those involved.
Visicalc changed my life. I’m not kidding.
whilst extraordinary in early days of computing, nowadays every office worker sees every problem as a spreadsheet problem..eventhough different paradigms (data structures) much more suited. Badly construed spreadsheets are the bane of office work.
One of the amazing thing about the influence of visicalc remains in the genetics of current programs like excel. Many of the keystroke commands from visicalc still work!
I hate modern Excel because it's slow and bloated and I don't use all those fancy modern features anyway. I prefer small, efficient pieces of software and I'm looking for alternatives that work well with only keyboard input. At this point, it looks like emulation and using these older applications are my best bet.
I worked at a Apple authorized dealer in New Orleans. When VisiCalc, came out it was a game changer in our sales. It was expensive, but it’s power sold Apples.
Thank you, YT algorithm for this blast from the past. One of my very first jobs, as a teenager, was working in a computer store. I saw how VisiCalc, arguably the first ever of the "killer apps" could single-handedly sell a computer. The sales guy demo'd Visicalc on an Apple, barely knowing the program or able to use it. Yet, the customer left and came back with some ledgers on paper, spent 2 hours *in the sales room* setting up spreadsheets. Then left with a fully loaded Apple ][ and accessories, just because of VisiCalc.
Weirdly enough, I could see wanting to do that to make sure it could actually handle everything.
I met Visicalc in 1983 (?) when working as a computer services manager for a large design/build construction company in Jacksonville, Florida. Visicalc came to me on an Apple 2+ and I was the operator who interfaced with budgetary unit managers in the preparation of departmental budgets. I've worked in the field ever since than and just recently ended my practice as a small business consultant specializing in technology integration. In my humble opinion, Visicalc is the single program that resulted in the computer explosion of the 1980's. Without Visicalc I suspect the production of small computers would never have seen the volume or competition that we did back then. After Visicalc I believe we moved to SuperCalc, then to Multiplan, skipping Lotus, and eventually Microsoft came out with Excel.
In 1981 I was so inspired by VisiCalc that I wrote a spreadsheet program for the Sinclair ZX81 and marketed it via a US company called Mindware. I was fortunate to make enough royalties to put down a deposit on my first flat, in Highgate, north London, and escape the seedy rented property I had been living in.
Was it called Computacalc?
It's illuminating to hear about someone from a time as early as the 70s being worried about becoming redundant from better technology.
OpenAI: Let me introduce you to existential crysis, good sir, optimist sir!
I worked as an electronic technician for the Postal Service and we used an Apple II and VisiCalc to test newly installed OCR mail sorting machines. I remember how exciting it was after a test run to see all the sorting bin totals show up on the screen. Thanks for the memories.
Back in the day, Radio Shack had a version of VisiCalc on cassette tape that was just about the only piece of software that worked, however it was only used in store to demo the TRS80 console. Customers couldn't buy it on tape but had to get it on disc, meaning they needed an expansion box plus disc drive, which more than doubled the total price. Sales staff were told if they ever gave a copy of the cassette version to a customer, they'd be immediately sacked.
In the early 80s a full featured competitor to VisiCalc was written in New Mexico on the TRS80 model iii for an advanced computer class final project. The student received an "F" on the project because, as the instructor said "nobody needs to add and subtract rows of numbers on a grid." The instructor could not see the usefulness nor the potential of the idea.
I had my first job in 1980 working for an Apple dealer. Visicalc was responsible for selling a lot of Apple II's, and could arguably say it was responsible for its success.
I think you could go even further and say that VisiCalc was responsible for the success of personal computing.
@@kenmohler4081 You may have to include IBM's decision to leave the PC as "Open Architecture" too. That decision ushered in a multitude of clones world-wide.
@@jimmurdoch7745 It did, Jim, but they kept a tight rein on the BIOS. That had to be reverse engineered and that took some time. But, like you said, they built the PC from off-the-shelf parts and once the BIOS problem was fixed, the clone makers were on their way.
@@jimmurdoch7745 honestly that was only because it sped up development. Historically, they were big fans of proprietary architectures, but they realized with the Apple II, Atari 800, and PET already beating them to market, they had to come up with something QUICK. They tried to close the architecture with the PS/2 and MCA... thankfully, with no success. Compaq answered with EISA instead and the rest is history.
I was around for much of the discussed arc. The producer has done a fair and accurate recounting of that fast moving and meaningful time. Thanks for the pleasant nudging of my aging memory.
It might be worth mentioning that Microsoft offered MultiCalc several years before Excel. As good as Visicalc was, the early competitors had exploited its weaknesses, primarily the limited display of the Apple II. Back in the early 1980s, Microsoft’s first big consumer product was the CP/M card (essentially a Z80 computer on a card) for Apple IIs which, coupled with an 80 character video card, allowed the Apple II to run CP/M which suported Supercalc, WordStar and dBase II. This setup was very popular as it brought the most powerful versions of critical business software to the already dominant Apple II.
Running on the DEC Rainbows as well running CP/M ... I was a teenager selling computers right out of high school. I was an electronics nut and ended up in a job at a place called "The Byte Shop" that job changed my life.
Do you mean Multiplan...introduced in 1982?
@@billb6283 - Right. It’s been a while. ;-)
@@billb6283 - It’s funny, I remember the clear plastic box it came in (like a giant CD case), the forest green motif on the inserts and printed material, the way that formulas referenced other cells offset in rows and columns rather that direct addresses but I couldn’t get the name right.
VisiCal and Lotus 1-2-3 !! Haven't heard of these in YEARS! cool to see this video, thanks for making!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I recall watching a TV short documentary (part of a an existing program) about VisiCalc. The effect on the lives of accountants, freed from having to endlessly write out, update, and error-correct all those matrices, cannot be understated. Their lives were transformed. Reportedly, there were accountants who met spreadsheet programmers, thanking them profusely for creating "spreadsheet" software. Also, the ability to rapidly obtain accountancy and financial results from this type of software was an enormous shot in the arm of business development around the word. Taking spreadsheet software away today would cripple the modern business world.
That was probably Triumph of the Nerds (based on the book Accidental Empires by Robert X Cringley as mentioned in this video). Here's the bit about Visicalc. th-cam.com/video/rrC722gKCIc/w-d-xo.html
I was a professional programmer for 45 years, starting on a Univac mainframe system in the mid 1970s. During that time I never found a need for a spreadsheet program. The greatest program I ever used was Microsoft Access. It was essentially a tool that could create other tools. I hope Microsoft Access will be covered in a later episode of this series.
Whoa, you were a Univac programmer? That's awesome, you must have some great stories!
I'd like to cover Access at some point, but I will probably cover Paradox and Dbase first, as I already have some good material on both of them in my research library. I have no idea when I will have the time, but they are definitely on the list of future videos
I developed user IT on the shop floor in the bank as we avoided the main IT department which had few actual coders and never understood the business side. I used Access for running a risk program but Excel was essential for consolidating the data and presenting it to the department before release. Excel was brilliant as you could have a blank spreadsheet just running the powerful background visual basic uploading data to the overseas head office without having to install on the PC and the IT department wading in if you screwed up the machine. Involving the IT department meant endless meetings with their plethora of analysts and their bringing in hoards of consultants and coders at vast expense. Everyone cast a blind eye to this as writing the stuff ourselves was so much cheaper. I have a feeling these days are well and truly over and everything goes through requisite channels nowadays.
Even the stuff IT had written was a nightmare to get fixed as everybody ran so slowly. One important amendment we needed resulted in a phone call 6 months later asking if we still needed it. I went to one IT meeting and they all reassured each other about they had not done last week before planning what not to do next week. I kept thinking haven't you people got phones rather than sitting around a table at every opportunity.
We did use Mapper at one stage together with IT which was really horrible but yet fun with long lines of comma separated functions and Mapperman was the term Univac used for the practitioner. I went to a course in Birmingham and it is sad how you can spend so much time learning a process that is doomed to extinction from the start.
I always remember Visicalc which I ran on a Commodore Pet Twin Floppy machine. It was such a revelation. I hadn't a clue what the manual was about so just played around with it. It is was an object lesson in that you more have to use the program to understand the manual rather than the other way around.
@@AnotherBoringTopiclove to see you do the story of dBASE. It was groundbreaking and I used it and programmed in dBase Ii and IV, until dBase came along, poorly implemented and couldn't complete with the juganaut that is Microsoft. Access, far less capable but with a simple interface for simple tasks, sold to the masses.
Visicalc was the most important program ever for the new micro world. It was a game changer. Unbelievable. I was blown away the first time I used it. Great video. Thanks!
I designed a floppy disk interface for the Apple ][ that could read and write IBM format floppies. (Apple used a non-standard format), and later, hard disk interface for the Apple ][ for a company called Symbiotics (or something similar)in the UK. Both sold very well, but only had a market because of VisiCalc.
I remember at the time, VisiCalc cost about £200. You could buy a used car in the UK for £200.
Some bright spark marketed cassettes of "InvisiCalc - the spreadsheet that does nothing" for about £5. It essentially drew a screenful of cells with numbers in, and with a simple key combination, you could switch between that and the ASCII porn you were really watching.
Several gaes by infocom had that feature a fake spreatsheet to hide the fact you were playing a game on company time
I purchased an Apple IIe right after they were released and purchased VisiCalc for use in my camera store. Later I used a program that allowed me to transport my files to Mac, and from there I used something that I recall was called Mac N Dos to transfer the files to DOS. Those files for some reason will still run today after transferring them over and over again. A great piece for small business.
Dan Bricklin made me a sandwich.
It was 1986. He had recently released Dan Bricklin’s Demo, a software package used to build software demos. My company, Personics Corporation, had just come out with SmartNotes (like 3M Post-It notes for computers). We (I) created a demo for it using Dan Bricklin’s Demo and I wrote a collection of assembly language routines to call out to from within the demo script. When Bricklin saw what I had accomplished he was so impressed that he invited my CEO and me for a lunchtime meeting at his home in Brookline, MA, just down the road from our Maynard, MA offices. And that’s how Dan Bricklin made me a Turkey sandwich.
You mean a turkey sandwich. Turkey, with a capital T, is a county, and being of around 783 thousand square kilometers in size, is entirely unsuitable as a sandwich filling.
Is that the same Personics that developed / distributed Monarch? Absolutely marvellous software for extracting data from massive text-based reports, and invaluable for analysis. I used it on MSDOS back in my early 20s. Your post is a year old, but I’d be delighted to receive a response from you.
Visicalc was like magic. Then Lotus 123 upped the spreadsheet world. Exciting times.
I was lucky enough to have access to VisiCalc running on a TRS-80 in the early eighties when I was around 13/14 years old. It started my career in IT and I have such fond memories of those times. Over the years I also used Lotus 123, As-Easy-As; an incredible shareware Lotus 123 clone by Trius Inc (what a clever name!), Supercalc, Quattro Pro. And now, of course, Excel. How things have changed. Currently in my mid 50s and excited to see what happens over the next 30-40 years.
What an excellent video! Perfect level of detail, clear speaking, I didn't need to see the screen to understand everything. I can't wait to check out the rest of the channel.
Excellent summation of the early days of PC adoption. My own entry into the tech sphere was a happy accident,... The company I worked with supplied Olympia and Olivetti typewriters,... This evolved into word-processors,... which then morphed into platforms which supported variations of PC/DOS and MS/DOS... Stock Control, Invoicing and Logistics was handled by the AS/400,... but we plebs didn't get to finger those keys,.. IBM's PC release was quickly followed by the release of the AMSTRAD cheap and cheerful PC,... we demonstrated this for clients, dragging it around the country and selling truckloads,... At my annual review, my boss was quick to spot the additional detailing I'd been able to put into my own reports, courtesy of SuperCALC,...
I remember going to a demo of VisiCalc at Leicester University back in the early eighties. Totally blew my mind at the time and got me excited for the future of software.
In the Commodore Wars documentary Bricklin and others talk about Visicalc and how getting on the Apple II first is what launched it as a business powerhouse ahead of the TRS80 and PET. They also mentioned how Atari was draconian and just did not want third party software on the 400 and 800. Big mistake lol.
Atari absolutely hated third party developers and sabotaged the 400 and 800 pretty badly(right down to threatening lawsuits against third party developers if I remember correctly) until they came to their senses….by which point the chance to grab a massive market share was gone. To be honest it really wasn’t until Jack Tramiel took them over that they started consistently making smart moves….by which point it was too late.
@@AnotherBoringTopic You'd think Macintosh would have gotten the message...
@@AnotherBoringTopic Just from coalescing what I've learned over the past 40 years or so, I think Atari's hatred of third-party developers was a relic of their experience with the 2600. They didn't realize what a boon it could be to the system's popularity, to have a wealth of software from multiple developers. In the console space, all the money was made on the software, not so much the hardware. That's still true today. But what drives sales of PC hardware is good software. Without that, your machine is dead in the water.
I taught myself SuperCalc by Sorcim which was included with the Osborne 1. Years later I taught myself Excel 1.0 which then was only available on the Apple Mac. 40 years late, I still use Excel on a daily basis.
Holy crap, VisiCalc! How many years has it been since I've thought of it?
This documents the seminal and exciting first interactions between main frame and personal computing brought about the enormous appetite for calculations processing in research, bureaucracies, and commerce.
BTW as of 2016, the State of California ran their entire budget one large Excel 2000 columns spread sheet.
This presentation is much fun and the details are of archival sourcing and an exemplary format for animating the coming era of animated/experiential learning where commerce/research/technology work together.
In 1981-1984 I spent days on this product, using an Osborne. wow.
I was so adept, and I just never jumped onboard the Excel as I had so much mental space shelved with pre-existing VisiCalc commands.
Excellent and exemplary.
ENCORE!
I searched Dan Bricklin on TH-cam and I've stumbled upon this amazing channel!
This was an extremely good video, but honestly I had to switch playback to .75 to understand it.
In 82 my company bought a Sirius PC expanded with 128k of memory and two 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drives. With it they bought Silicon Office software with the intention of building a maintenance planning system for the head office complex. The supplier threw in a free copy of Visicalc. My manager would not let me use the PC, but my team leader got hold of a box of floppies (which cost a couple of days wages at the time) and allowed me to use it between 7 and 8 am before anyone else arrived at work. Within two weeks I was working on it almost all day, it transformed the way our function worked. In my next role a couple of years later we had an IBM PC and Lotus Symphony, followed by 1-2-3. I ended up doing the computing element of everyone's projects rather than leading my own. In my next job I denied any knowledge of computers or programming, as the only way to progress in management roles. I would still quietly build stuff, but let someone in the team document it, write and run training, and take the credit. Visicalc may be gone, but it certainly kickstarted the PC revolution.
I ran across this at random but immediately realized this was the program I swore by in the 80s. I spent much time with it in my accounting job and much appreciated it’s recalculation feature. The PCs of the day were not up to the recalc feature which had to be turned off to speed it up. In those days you needed a math co-processor for it to speed along. That was the days of 8088 chip. When Lotus 1,2,3 came along it quickly took a commanding lead but Supercalc4 was cheaper. Also, my boss had stuck me with a Z80 machine that ran CP/M, not DOS - but my memory is hazy. I tried to adapt to the new MS Excel, but by that time my days as an accountant were numbered.
10:34 Prime computer! I used to service that brand back in the day, but hardly ever heard about them outside of work.
Nice eye! A Prime minicomputer was used for final VisiCalc development to reach a shippable product. According to Bricklin's book (Bricklin on Technology) the Prime "had a good version of PL/I in which to write the tools. Bob [Frankston] wrote a macro assembler and linker for the 6502 microprocessor, and I wrote a simple visual editor and accounting system." - Page 447
Great and really enjoyed the trip down memory lane. Made me think about CP/M and even the odd ball dedicated Lexintron Word Processor
I was but a teen, but I remember clearly the buzz getting an Apple II with VisiCalc caused in the front office of the small company I worked for.
I didn't understand what was the big whoopie, but I remember the comptroller (is that even a title any more?) demonstrating with great flourish, how changing something over HERE, would change something over THERE.
comptroller position is alive and well in all organization. They cannot be replaced.
I remember a follow up program he created called Dan Bricklin’s Demo software that was one of my favourite tools to demo new product features. Saved me tons of time - and made me look great as a product manager :)
Excellent! Thank you. I remember VisiCalc and the Apple II well...
I was co-chairman for NCC 1979 Personal Computing Festival. Bricklin proposed a paper about VisiCalc and we turned it down. We couldn't see any use. 😁
NCC = N??? Computer Club?
A great little book would be many short recollections or interviews with people who turned down projects which turned out to be huge.
@@johnabbe National Computer Conference. It was the largest tech conference in the USA (bigger than CES back then).
Excellent research and presentation. I am so glad I found you today and subscribed. I was selling Tandy 1000 computers at Radio Shack and remember Visicalc being sold for those. All good wishes.
I really appreciate it, it means a lot to me to hear from people who were active in the computing world of the 1980s! It was such an exciting time to be in tech and one with thousands of stories that deserve to be told.
@@AnotherBoringTopic Add me to the list. I bought my first computer, the TRS-80 Model 1, while in high school (saved money from summer jobs) in 1979 or 1980. Then saved and got an "expension interface" (but a 3rd party one which was WAY cheaper), the lowercase kit, and, eventually, a floppy drive. This is what got me started in the IT business. All because a very nice manager at a local Radio Shack would let me use the one on display and learn BASIC on it when no one was around. Moved on to the Model 100 (laptop - sort of), Model 1000, and others in addition to Compaqs and other models.
Things were way different back then. I would go to the "Capital PC User Group" meetings (DC area) and actually met Bill Gates a few times, even providing a suggestion about his C compiler. I expected him to get hissy, but he said "that's a good idea" and had his assistant write it down. This was in the 1984-85 timeframe, I think, and no one knew who Gates was except us nerds. We literally would talk to him face to face at these meetings. Whole different world...
Long ago on commodor 64 i searched for a small spread sheet . I found 4 “candidates”as i looked in retail stores. First thing i looked at was how big was the instruction book . First book was 8x11 x2 2 books second was 1 book 8x11 third was 4x6x 1/4 that was my choice .I was a secretary at church ,reports 3 hours down to 20 minutes. I went to college learning IBM spread sheet. The only thing i learned was IBM could handle more layers due to greater memory.
This is very good content and thank you for this historical insights into critical ephoch technologies of our time.
I learned Visicalc on my brand new Apple II+ in 1980 at Northern Telecom in Ottawa…the job was to calculate new product costs which involved many components, labour rates, yields, etc…what a brilliant invention!
Excellently researched and presented.
As a corporate tax accountant I have gone through the progression of spreadsheet software, but before that... massive multicolumn paper spreadsheets. I felt the pain of needing to roll a minor change through many subsidiary calculations. Visicalc was like a miracle, like magic! Then Lotus 1-2-3 and finally, Excel.
I was working in the tax dept at one of the big 3 oil companies in the 1980s. We had 2 PCs shared by the whole dept. Seeing the productivity improvements provided by spreadsheet software prompted the manager to get budget approval for a PC at each person's desk. This would never have happened otherwise.
In my opinion, Visicalc was the ripple that started the business community PC adoption tidal wave.
Just found your channel. Excellent content. Bought the books you mentioned in the video, cool to see more topics like this. Would be great to hear about more book recommendations. Another sub for you sir!
Appreciate the sub! And glad to hear you picked up the books from the video, I think you'll find them deeply engrossing :)
Very interesting and seemingly very thorough. Excellent work!
I love this stuff. I got my first computer in 1980 an AppleII+ w 64K (I got the expansion card) an Apple green screen monitor, an NEC 9 pin printer and 1 floppy drive. I bought a book on programing in basic a year before so I would be ready!
The vision of these guys was very nice. AT the time the accounting was done with the NCR32´s and similar machines from Borroughs ...for example. Such machines were no more no less than mechanics SpreadSheet typewritters. There was then a little more sofisticated machine from a small company from Japan that had a similar more moder mechanics system which, contrary to the the NCR´s 32 was a little more electronic ... But the vision of these guys was 100% correct and in my opinion the SpreadSheet is the program that "made the PC´s popular" !!
Microsoft Multiplan fits in there somewhere:
"Multiplan was an early spreadsheet program, following VisiCalc, developed by Microsoft. Introduced in 1982, initially for computers running CP/M, it was ported to a number of other operating systems including MS-DOS and Xenix."
I think it even ran on the Commodore 64.
I remember Multiplan. It was the forerunner of Excel. Most Microsoft software wasn't actually developed by Microsoft, it was purchased from other individuals and companies. Microsoft did not even develop MS-DOS.
Yes, Microsoft Multiplan was their first spreadsheet which disappeared and became Excel. What did I do with that box? VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet I used as I think I used every spreadsheet mentioned in this video. I still today love spreadsheet and their ease of use. I still use Excel today, and Google Sheets.
I used to sell Apple IIs back in the day, Actually, they sold themselves. I could sell him the full rig - two disk drives,Apple II and Visicalc - in-fifteen minutes. Demo Visicalc as a profit-poss statement, change one value and the entire spreadsheet updated, his eyes glaze over and he pulls out a credit card. One contractor set up his entire bidding proposal system and started raking in triple the work. But THEN, we started getting visits from Naval Post-Graduate students, _serious_ math geeks that asked questions I could only answer by handing them the Visicalc manual , and they bought 'em. Before _Easywriter,_ some folks used VC for line-by-line word processing - make a cell 72 characters wide, and just type away
I LOVED the 6502 -first computer was a KIM-1 with a massive 1K of RAM, so I learned assembler before Applesoft BASIC. Visicalc was the key to REAL use, not just Dungeons and Drag Queens... Thanks to Woz and Jobs for the hardware, but VISICALC made the personal computer into a must-have tool for the (non-Catholic) masses...
Do CP/M vs MS-DOS next...
We are going to be covering CP/M, DR-DOS, and Seattle Computer Products little OS (IYKWIM) in separate videos, I’m just not sure when yet. :)
Very interesting historical account. I attended a Boston Computer Club meeting in Jan. 1983 where Mitch Kapor introduced Lotus 1-2-3. Bricklan and Fylstra were there. They had worked for Kapor on this project. Bricklan recounted the early history of VisiCalc, including the Vic's One Egg Diner story. But if I remember correctly, the diner was in Somerville, on Mass. Ave, and just across the line from Cambridge; in Porter Square.
You're recollection of the location of Vic's is correct, but that is North Cambridge. The Somerville line is on the far side of Porter Square, not cutting across Mass Ave. (Vic''s was still a popular place for a certain group of MIT hackers in the early 80s when I was there. Also, I lived right at the Porter Square intersection at that time, where they would later build the T stop. I used that Multics, but didn't know the Visicalc guys.)
I loved this video from beginning to end. Subscribed!
Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the sub!
Back in 1983, I worked for an Apple dealer. I just loved Visicalc.
Love this channel so far, great job. This the type of boring shit I love!
I won't say that the lead was buried but what floored me is that Spreadsheets began on chalkboards! How caveman! That's some intense determination there.
most people call it I triple E, nitpicking aside very well done and informative video. Good job!
Appreciate the compliment, glad you enjoyed it!
Gret video, ironically these topics aren't boring can't wait to see what the next interesting topic is
Well our goal is to take boring topics and try to make them interesting, glad you enjoyed the video!
I used Visicalc in 1983 on an IBM PC which had the serial number 28, in the Dean's Office of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois. Yes, one the very first. The photos in the video show the second model, as the first had only one floppy drive. 64 k was indeed the max RAM, and was limited not only by the socket and chips set, but also by available chips. The 640 k was from the second model, I believe, although there was a 128k stage as well.
Supercalc was a big upgrade when it came on the market with a ten fold increase in logical space, as was Multiplan, whose linked spreadsheets were a huge gamechanger as well. Lotus was always clunky, and I avoided it. Excel was Multiplan's successor and left Lotus in the dust, but failed to bring forward the keyboard multikey entry methods that had made Multiplan utterly fantastic. Excel still to this day has a slower data entry interface than Multiplan's very fast system. Mice, while intuitive, are far slower than keyboard only entry, but Microsoft blue pilled on the mouse.
I still have my copy for the "ATARI 800XL". Have the box, disks and books in great condition. Good video. Thank you
Great video about Visicalc. I had a version running for my C64 (I guess a bootleg PET port) and never used it. I started using spreadsheets in 1993, Lotus 1-2-3 at first then Excel 5 on windows 3.1
Best explanation I have heard. Thanks
I just got pointed to this tonight and, wow, thank you very much for this story. I enjoyed it very much and I've subscribed and will be checking your back-catalogue and/or looking forward to a similar story on the history of the relational database. I think there's an argument that could be made that RDBs were the first business tool actually invented for computers rather than transferring tools like account books or typing pools to a PC.
Well well! I was using VisiCalc on a Commodore 16 in 1979... Never realised that there was so much behind it... Became a programmer and I've just retired! Happy days!
I remember VisiCalc in the mid 1980s
Way back.. away back. I was using VisiCalc to model transistor amplifiers in college. A great time saver for sure. Of course today one would use SPICE or a variant. Good times 😀
The killer app for the apple II.
Indeed. Without VisiCalc spurring sales in 1979 and 1980 it’s not hard to see Apple falling by the wayside and never getting big enough to do the Macintosh. The 1979 Apple II was definitely the weakest of the Big Three (although it had some strengths in its hardware) and had the weakest sales and the highest price, had VisiCalc come out for either the TRS-80 or the PET it’s definitely possible that Apple wouldn’t have survived in the market, at least not independently.
Granted, the catastrophically dysfunctional management at Commodore and Tandy would probably still have managed to eventually screw things up, even if they had been granted the gift of a year’s worth of VisiCalc exclusivity.
It was. I've even said it was the killer apo for the personal computer.
Oregon Trail.
@@AnotherBoringTopic VisiCalc DID come out on the TRS-80 as well the very next year, as well as on the PET. The TRS-80 version didn’t have copy protection, which meant that it probably ended up with far more copies used on the TRS-80 than other machines even with fewer sales of it.
The result would have been a killer app that was not being sold, so the TRS-80 might have sold more machines but VisiCalc probably would have not sold nearly as many copies and so the program would likely have not been ported elsewhere.
My dad was an accountant and into PCs, so he bought an Apple 2e, with an additional floppy drive, and VisiCalc was the main application he'd work with because it was a time save. Now, I personally have a love-hate relationship with the modern day spreadsheet : )
This was great, really needs more viewers, although the delivery should slow down a bit.
Glad you enjoyed it :) and thank you for the feedback!
Great video! I do a lot of research in this area (more on Xerox PARC and the rise of the Mac, but same general era) and there's a lot of details in your video that I was not sure about, e.g. how Bricklin and Frankston met.
A lot of the information out there on VisiCalc, online at least, seems to be either wrong or gets things mixed up. Glad you enjoyed the video!
When in High School I started in VisiCalc (self taught). I was also programming in assembler in the Apple IIE.
When Lotus 123 came out I was hired by a nose bleed financial advisory firm. It was super easy work as I was very good in math, logic and programming. And I had just scored a great high school job at a rib restaurant that everyone else wanted - only to quit, dress up and work in a fancy office.
Then I was hired by DoD for a project as I was great at assembler. It was connected to Control Data Corp. So people were surprised I quit my great job at the financial planner.
I hated working with the engineers-turned-programmers so I quit and went to college. Never programmed again.
Love it. I had to use VisiCalc in college in 1985.
Great video that brought back memories of keeping Stratomatic stats on a Visicalc spreadsheet back in 1983.
FYI - IEEE is typical pronounced "I triple E" (member for almost 40 years(
Hey man your video is GREAT documentary very very well done - congratulation ! Thanks for doing this video
Thanks for watching, glad you enjoyed it!
Visicalc was BY FAR the most important software program for the PC. When Viscalc came out, PCs immediately made worthwhile the PC for businesses, both large and small. Has not been given the credit it so richly deserves.
Love from Bangladesh🇧🇩🖤
I remember being influenced in my career choices in 1975 by a belief that soon every program that was needed would have been written and the demand for programmers would drop substantially. Not my best call but I do not regret not becoming a programmer.. It is reassuring that Bricklin had some of the same thinking.
Wow, in scanning the comments, it great to see so many nerds that around my age. Amazing
I remember that version of VisiCalc in the brown packaging. I used the program on an Apple ][ back in the day. Someone I worked with in the 80's knew Peter Jennings. He gave me the impression that Jennings had been more involved with the development of VisiCalc than was mentioned in this video.
My boss back then bought an Apple ][ just for Visicalc. I was amazed when I saw it. I ended up with my own Apple ][ for which I paid dearly back then. Had a lot of fun with it.
I can't wait for you to make a video on Minitab!!! Seriously!
I remember those days and thinking, Who needs a spreadsheet? Now I couldn't live without Google Sheets.