The Idea

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" height=50 BGCOLOR="#CCCC99" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="027000d2esnpes.gif"> <div> <B>The Idea</B></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=394 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> The idea for the electronic spreadsheet came to me while I was a student at the Harvard Business School, working on my MBA degree, in the spring of 1978. Sitting in Aldrich Hall, room 108, I would daydream. "Imagine if my calculator had a ball in its back, like a mouse..." (I had seen a mouse previously, I think in a demonstration at a conference by Doug Engelbart, and maybe the Alto). And "..imagine if I had a heads-up display, like in a fighter plane, where I could see the virtual image hanging in the air in front of me. I could just move my mouse/keyboard calculator around, punch in a few numbers, circle them to get a sum, do some calculations, and answer '10% will be fine!'" (10% was always the answer in those days when we couldn't do very complicated calculations...)</div> <bR> <div> The summer of 1978, between first and second year of the MBA program, while riding a bike along a path on Martha's Vineyard, I decided that I wanted to pursue this idea and create a real product to sell after I graduated.</div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="08be9960.jpg" border=0 width="233" height="150" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">  <IMG SRC="08d7b960.jpg" border=0 width="123" height="150" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">  <IMG SRC="0b8e3960.jpg" border=0 width="227" height="150" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> Baker Library at Harvard Business School, a picture of Dan in Aldrich 108 the first year from the HBS Yearbook (that was before he cut his long ponytail in the summer of 1978), a later photograph taken at the spot where Dan decided to create VisiCalc while bicycling on Martha's Vineyard</div> <bR> <div> Here is a picture of me holding that calculator, a TI Business Analyst:</div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="03bc80a0.jpg" border=0 width="200" height="266" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> Dan's calculator from business school</div> <bR> <div> Eventually, my vision became more realistic, and the heads-up display gave way to a normal screen. The mouse was replaced in the first prototype in the early fall of 1978 by the game paddle of the Apple ][. You could move the cursor left or right, and then push the "fire" button, and then turning the paddle would move the cursor up and down. The R-C circuit or whatever in the Apple ][ was too sluggish and my pointing to imprecise, so I switched to the two arrow keys of the Apple ][ keyboard (it only had 2) and used the space bar instead of the button to switch from horizontal movement to vertical.</div> <bR> <div> I created that first prototype over a weekend on an Apple ][ I borrowed for the purpose from Dan Fylstra of Personal Software, later our publisher. I wrote it in Apple Basic. It did not scroll, yet, but it had the columns and rows and some arithmetic.</div> <bR> <div> To design exactly how the program would work, I'd create state diagrams, showing what would happen when you pressed various keys. Here is a scan of a diagram that included many features, such as replication, help, etc. It was written on the back of a sheet of spreadsheet paper, hence the blue column and row lines. It about 17"x11", so it is scanned in two pieces, which I show here side by side:</div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="046d4130.jpg" border=0 width="212" height="275" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"><IMG SRC="047d2130.jpg" border=0 width="210" height="275" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> State diagram design for spreadsheet, from winter 1978-1979</div> <bR> <div> Here is a detail, showing some of the steps in early replicate. Note that you could point with the arrow keys ("<->") and space bar ("sp"), since this was for the Apple ][. "A-ZZ" referred to  typing in the cell coordinate explicitly (e.g., "B14"). The Return key ("Ret") would get you some options for incrementing the value (which was not implemented in the first version):</div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="0482c350.jpg" border=0 width="300" height="309" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> Detail of Dan Bricklin's state diagram</div> <bR> <div> Fylstra, needing a program to sell that could do checkbooks, and being an MBA himself so he appreciated the value of financial forecasting, made a deal with my friend Bob Frankston and me. The basic deal was worked out during dinner at Joyce Chen's Restaurant in Cambridge, MA, near Fresh Pond. Bob and I would create the program, as authors, and Dan's company, Personal Software, would publish it. This "author/publisher" arrangement became popular in the PC industry. Personal Software would pay us 35.7% of their net gross for normal sales, and 50% for OEM sales. This was based, as I remember it, on an initial price for the product equivalent to the TI calculator (like the one shown here) that was popular at Harvard ($34.95, I think), less some costs, and then splitting the profit by some percentage. The OEM sale percentage reflected the difference in costs and other factors.</div> <bR> <div> Bob and I decided to form a company under which to do business. Software Arts, Inc., was born, incorporating on January 2, 1979.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Patents</B></div> <div> For information about why we didn't patent VisiCalc, see the article on <A HREF="../patenting.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="../patenting.htm"><U>Patents</U></A> in the Writings Section this web site.</div> <bR> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=36 BGCOLOR="#CCCC99" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="027000d2esnpes.gif"> <div>                           <A HREF="saiearly.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Early Days"><U>Next Page ></U></A></div> <div> © Copyright 1999, 2003 by Daniel Bricklin. All Rights Reserved.</div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>