Dan Bricklin: From VisiCalc to WikiCalc

On January 2, 1978, Software Arts was founded by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston to create an electronic spreadsheet. In June of 1979, the product of their collaboration, VisiCalc, made its official debut, and the personal computer was transformed. VisiCalc has faded into software history, but it was the clear ancestor of Microsoft Excel.

In this Super Techies interview, I chat with Dan Bricklin about software innovation past and present. Bricklin discusses how he dreamed up the idea for VisiCalc, his excursion into handwriting applications for the tablet PC, and his current role as the inventor of WikiCalc, a collaborative spreadsheet program that merges financial formulas with wikis.

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[Fuji_film]

Hi Dan,
Super Techies is, well, super. I like it very much but retro/history section in the interview should be longer. One more thing, without Bill Gates and Paul Allen this series will never be complete. I hope you can convince them to talk.

[Commander_Spock]

Yeah right! "On January 2, 1978, Software Arts was founded by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston to create an electronic spreadsheet. In June of 1979, the product of their collaboration, VisiCalc, made its official debut, and the personal computer was transformed. VisiCalc has faded into software history, but it was the clear ancestor of Microsoft Excel..."

Read this extract from a 1998 Lotus Development Corporation communication; "Re: Concerning the issues with 1-2-3 that are talked about in the documentation you gave me, most of the issues are related to converting files between older and newer versions of product and converting documents between Lotus and Microsoft. Anytime a file is saved backwards or saved with an older file format than the format the file was created under, such as saving a 1-2-3 , 97 file for Windows 95 into a WK1 format for DOS, then naturally we are expected to loose certain features due to technology and features that are present now that were not present 8 - 10 years ago. Similarly, if we try to convert a file from Lotus into Excel or Excel into Lotus, due to differences in the products not every feature will be converted perfectly with the file filters that are available. Both Lotus and Microsoft create similar spreadsheet programs; however, there are several differences in both programs and these differences will remain to distinguish the products apart. We do try to design conversion filters that will allow as much of the file formats as possible to be exchanged and converted without disrupting the actual file design and format.

In one of your letters you made mention of the @IRR and @ERR functions in the 1-2-3 product. By design the @IRR (notably "absent" in Open Office) will calculate the Internal Rate of Return; where the @ERR is used in conjunction with other formulas, posted was an "ERR" showing an error was received in the calculations. As far as I can see in the program I cannot find an @ERR function that will allow us to calculate an Economic Rate of Return"

Talk about conveniently sweeping parts of the history of the development of the
"Spread Sheet" under the carpet. Huh. :-( !

[Frewgle]

I thought the same thing - ancestor to Excel or Lotus 123. What about Symphony?

[rmcaase]

Commander_Spock and Frewgle are dead wrong. I purchased an Apple II in February 1980 along with a copy of Visicalc. It was the first electronic spreadsheet to gain any popularity and was clearly initiated through Bricklin's experiences at Digital Equipment Corporation and their word processing division. Lotus 1-2-3 purchased the assets of Software Arts including the Visicalc code and not-really-a-competitor Multiplan was purchased by Microsoft and rewritten into Excel. Symphony arrived years after Visicalc ... there would have been no IBM PC or Microsoft had the Apple II with Visicalc not been such a phenomenom.

[video_freak]

Total bull. Apple was there but so was Tandy. I bought a TRS-80 in 1980 and Visicalc. I ran a small busines on it. Within 2 years IBM was out with DOS and shortly after came 123. It all would have happened just as fast had Steve Jobs gone off and done something entirely different.

[dfarber]

Of course VisiCalc is the ancestor of Lotus 123, Improv, Symphony, Quattro etc....but Excel is the only one standing

[JadedGamer]

Users of Apple iWorks' Numbers application shake our heads at the archaic model used in these VisiCalc descendants. While we lay out our tables and graphs on pages instead of trying to "trick" a classic spreadsheet into treating a set of cells as a graph container...

(Note: Yes I know we still use A$3 and the like to address cells, but there are mode readable alternatives if you want to avoid that.)