Meet the inventor of the electronic spreadsheet | Dan Bricklin
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- čas přidán 15. 06. 2024
- Dan Bricklin changed the world forever when he codeveloped VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet and grandfather of programs you probably use every day like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. Join the software engineer and computing legend as he explores the tangled web of first jobs, daydreams and homework problems that led to his transformational invention.
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Spreadsheets are not just for business use, but also scientific, industrial, medical, mathematical, etc. They are the extension of the calculator that NEEDED to exist! This man thought it up and I sincerely thank him for his contribution to humanity.
And this video proves much more what you said, and that people still don't understand the importance of spreadsheets yet. Just 125K views for this video... Please, come on! This man is a genius!🤦♂️
A simple spreadsheet can make a great list of things, a database of any kind, simple calculations for a common computer user. Not only business/financial stuff.
@@charliedays I agree. Probably 95% of people these days take spreadsheet software for granted while also grossly underestimating its power and capability.
@@LagMasterSam I'm aware that people overuse the "underrated" word nowadays for everything that is not considered "popular." But this is indeed an underrated invention. The masses will know about Apple's founder everywhere, but not the one who created the spreadsheet. That shows you the lack of general knowledge right there.😶
Unfortunately, they are also one of the most abused programs about. The number of times I've seen them used as a database of whatever, then they try and shuffle things around, disjointing columns of cells from others, (i.e. accidentally sorting one column only)
and ending up with a totally garbled mess. It's just not funny!
I was at the Apple Developer Conference about 10 years ago and I sat down to lunch and read the name tag of the guy across from me. Dan Bricklin. I said "THE Dan Bricklin??" I think he was pleased that I recognized the name. He modestly acknowledged his role in the history of computers, which is massive, it has to be said.
It’s always the ones like this that achieve the big things.
Similar thing happened to me at a MacWorld conference years ago, Bill Atkinson sat down behind me and we had a fun chat about fonts.
so why didn't apple have "excell"
and it was always "microsoft office for mac"?
@@christophercolumbus8944 Pretty sure everybody stole everything from Visicalc and Dan and boned him for royalties for Lotus 123 and Excel and Sheets and whatever else came after it.
That's a memory that will be with you always.😊
I was a kid with a IIe back in the day. I couldn't afford VisiCalc so I wrote my own. It was in BASIC and not Assembly, but it worked pretty well. My dad used it for his business because he wasn't sure that he wanted to make the investment for an "expensive" computer that used "lots of power" (the IIe would draw 75W peak - but he had mainframe fog - LOL). I kept developing for Apple, and then they started charging for their software development kit - which I couldn't afford - so I left the Apple ecosystem and never looked back. What a great presenter and what a great story. A real person with vision.
I really wanted to program for the Mac but the whole shelf of fancy white binders of secrets was priced way out of reach and I couldn't steal it, so I never bothered. The farthest I ever got was making desktop game widgets in codewarrior. Then I found Borland Turbo C++ for DOS at like, $40 in 1994. I think Apple's bizarre software ecosystem is what really killed their business from the 80s thru the late 90s. Jobs somehow made the NeXT even worse to program, and OS X still suffers from that company's mistakes.
@@stickyfox I am glad, in a way, that others share my experience. I tell this story to fanboyz occasionally and they look at me like I have two heads. I don't think they understand what the magnitude of cost was for Apple's early tools. I don't know what it is today - I've never had to go there again. But I loved their product... truly groundbreaking.
@@stickyfox I remember when Borland made Quattro-Pro but I never saw it. However, I saw Borland Quattro-Pro advertised in PC Magazine. Unnecessarily, I went to a computer school to learn an Office Technology course. There, I learned SuperCalc on an IBM PC computer. I mentioned that I went to a technical school unnecessarily, because I did not need it. I possess solid typewriting skills that should enable me to be hired in any firm and to be cross-trained as necessary. When I was disabled in 2002, I bought my own microcomputer, called Cybernet, with Microsoft Windows XP Professional and Microsoft Office XP Professional, with Microsoft Publisher 2002. I learned more things that I would not possibly learn in a job.
@@captainkeyboard1007 I was a BIG fan of Supercalc. It came with my used Osborne and then I bought it for my wife's Apple lle. I could maneuver around with Supercalc pretty fast.
@@nemo227 I like the microcomputer concept because creating documents and files on it affords the benefit of controlling them and working with them in many ways; and it enhances my keyboard skill, since I was an avid typist at 12 years-old. Thank you very much for tapping or even typing to me. Happy Keyboarding!
My first encounter with VisiCalc was on a colleague's new Apple II home computer after a pleasant dinner.
I had been tearing my hair out for a couple of days trying to balance out the component values for a switch-mode power supply. After entering the basic formulae describing my problem, I found I was able to tweak anything and quickly see the COMPLETE result. I was blown away!
BTW that 30-40 minutes work produced an end result that performed just as required.
Thank you Dan - on behalf of all engineers around the planet.
I can't imagine the world without Dan's wits, passion and hard work. Thank you for making our lives so much easier Dan. Great respect! 🙏🙌
A true pioneer and computing legend. Thank you Dan! I learned Lotus 123 in business school and have since made my career about programming Excel. The spreadsheet truly is the killer app.
So he was a dude that was annoyed with something, so came up with his own tool to so it. I can't begin to explain how many times I have seen people use Excel to do this exact thing. I know someone who basically Excel'd himself out of a job. The spreadsheet was so thorough it turned an entire career into a 30 minute daily proccess thanks to digital spreadsheets.
This man is a hero of modern times. He has inspired so many people who didn't realise they were even inspired. It's such a basic tool anyone can use, yet deeply powerful.
I'm going to go cry for a bit because this dude is such a legend.
Sir, I’m removing your man card.
I actually had VisiCalc running on my Apple II. In fact I still have both the computer and the software package. Today I work on extremely huge environmental research spreadsheets using Excel to number crunch millions of cells. Thank you, Dan!
I find it interesting that throughout this talk he pushes the value of prototyping. After Visicalc his next major product was "Dan Bricklin's Demo", a program for creating interactive prototypes and demos. I used it a lot in the late '80s to prototype new products where I worked at the time.
I remember seeing ads for Dan Bricklin's Demo in the 1980s.
Actually, that was the third product. The second was called TK!Solver, a tool for solving equations. It didn’t meet with as much success as Visicalc.
@@bunkie2100 I remember TK!Solver. The reason it wasn't a big hit is simply that the market for people who can find use for an electronic spreadsheet is *GINORMOUS.*
Not so much, however, for equation solvers.
Coursera sent me here. I am doing their Excel Skills for Business course from Macquarie University.
hey peter did coursera certificate value all over the world
same! :D
Same :D
Coursera may change my life because of Excel itself. I'm doing the Excel specialization as I write this comment. Did you finish your Excel courses? I hope you're doing great with those office skills.😀
Same
I met Dan back in 1980 when he gave a presentation at Chapman College in So. Cal. for the TRS80 users group. I was very impressed with the first "business" application for a personal computer other than a word processor. The TRS80 badly needed a powerful program like Visicalc and he delivered. I have used every spreadsheet program since. But I still have fond memories of the first for the PC.
My first job title in IT, at the age of 20 (late 80s), was “Spreadsheet Programmer”! That job was using Supercalc 5 on PCs, but by then I was already a spreadsheet expert, having started with VisiCalc on a TRS-80 Model 2 at the age of 13, and moving on to Lotus 1-2-3 on an IBM XT during my later teens. Dan and Bob changed my life and I’m so grateful to them. I’m in my mid 50s now and still don’t take spreadsheets for granted. They’re still an wonderful tool.
THANK YOU!
I started my accounting career with 13 column pads, slide rules and punch cards for computer work ( FORTRAN 2 and COBOL). I have used Visicalc, Lotus123, Quatro Pro, and Excel. Your vision has changed my life.
I feel fortunate to be old enough to identify with every element of this amazing story. What a long way we've come in the computer age.
Mr. Dan you are a great man. God bless you
over the years - i've marveled at Excel and the idea of the spreadsheet - amazed that something as narrowly focused as a accountant's spreadsheet - could turn into such an all powerful tool - - i never knew who came up with the idea - Dan Bricklin has every right to feel as proud of his little baby as any other inventor - considering how much and how many ways its descendants are being used - he has without doubt played in as big part in shaping today's modern world as Gates & Jobs etc
He should get a Nobel or something similar.
Johnfortich Vista Not a Jew not qualified for Nobel
yes
Amen John !
@@mayank25121990 lmao Jewish Nobel Prize winners only consists ~20% in total.
Absolutely.
I didn't know who was invented the spreadsheet! This man is a genius! Thanks a lot, Sir, you will be remembered forever!
Richard Mattesich invented it... wiki him... plus where is Frankston's mention for Visicalc?
Nobody will remember him. You didn’t even know him until now.
This was the *electronic* spreadsheet. As mentioned early in the video, paper spreadsheets are hundreds of years old.
@@RonJohn63 Indeed yes, and we can still use paper spreadsheets if we don't have a computer handy.
@@nemo227 I read a little book around 50 years ago on how to make a timetable for the whole school, to make sure each class had a teacher and a room for each period. The deputy head was supposed to start in his summer holiday by spreading a sheet out on his living room floor ...
A great technology/history lesson from the actual person who actually did it... Thanks TED.
I was a Fortune 500 corporate accountant and one of the first gen of "spreadsheet jockeys" who used "Lotus 1-2-3", essentially the software that "absorbed or killed" VisiCalc, take your pick.
Lotus is also, of course, now long gone, killed off by Excel. It can't be expressed strongly enough how electronic spreadsheets revolutionized business productivity. I was able to shorten
our monthly accounting closing cycle from 4 days to 2 by directly downloading data from our mainframe into a "multi-dimensional" spreadsheet that I designed and customized. This allowed for
instantaneous updating and adjustments on the fly, whereas prior to that all input was done via "dumb terminals" directly into the mainframe on a "captive" financial program that was
not "customizable". Made my job a heck of a lot easier, although it was surprising, or maybe not, how many feathers I ruffled when I implemented it. People don't like change, especially when
you show them up. Looking back upon this time, it was remarkable how quickly VisiCalc "died" and was replaced. I started using Lotus in 1986, and by that time Visicalc was viewed as something from the "stone age", and I'm not really being hyperbolic. When I began using Lotus, it was a fairly polished product and I never appreciated the "growing pains" and ingenuity that it took to create an innovative, revolutionary tool like this. So, Mr. Bricklin, a very belated "thank you" for making my life so much easier!
Thank you Dan,
I used Visicalc back in '82 on a Commodore Pet.
You are a legend.
How this episode did not get the views it deserves is beyond me! Dan really had gone through all the hardest work there is to make our lives as easy as possible. What a genius and outstanding contributor to the current and succeeding generation. Bless this man.
Dan Bricklin, your work is priceless. Thank you very very much!! You are more than Nobel Prize.
My first job was in surgical research, we had vast amounts of research data to analyse. We bought Visicalc for our early Commodore PET, and that greatly speeded up our work.
I was an early Visicalc user. And I bought a Radio Shack Model 1 over the Apple 2 because Visicalc on the R=Model 1 had lower case and not all caps, and twice the screen size. God it was fun learning visicalc and finding not only accounting aristhmetic, but statistics and engineering math as well. And yes, most of us early users were Visicalc fans, and angry that Dan Bricklin's name was forgotten. Good to see this acknowledgment.
Did you move to Lotus 123 too? As most people did?
I wish I could hug this man for making my life easier
at some point in the past I did manage bread n butter for my family selling my 'spreadsheet skill' (if I may call it)
God bless you 'sir'
This man is officially my favorite human being. Excel is life.
You might not realize this, but Excel doubles as an ideal environment for artists to organize and manage ideas. It can even make ideas dynamic using formulas and cell references.
Then I must be dead since I don't use it. And any other electronic spreadsheet.
An imaginative person with a spreadsheet can do the most amazing things...
A brilliant mind, Dan Bricklin. God bless you!
This guys software till this day is installed and used on virtually every machine in every business in the world, What more is there to say. I recall Lotus 123. Thanks Dan you champ
This man is a hero.
This is so wonderful. Thanks
The last sentence saved it all.
what a guy. a new hero. thank you
Inspiring ! Spreadsheets made my working life from just working to so match fun. Together with my manager of the stockroom at the airport. We where at the forefront of the whole technical department in 1987. Then Lotus 123, exel, numbers. Happy memory’s making all these sheets.
Glad YT showed me this. Thx Dan, Bob & Mitch for making the best software ever!
It's an honour to hear from the inventor himself
We live in a different world thanks to your endeavours
Also thanks for reminding us how to challenge our perceptions to innovative and create solutions to real world problems.
I want to say: Thank you Dan Bricklin. Through your invention, made on the year that I was born, you make our lives better everyday. Spreadsheet are so amazingly useful. Thank you.
This video was so enjoyable! Thank you for sharing it!
What a breaking invention. Deep respect 🙏
What a guy! I remember getting my copy of Visicalc in that brown binder, probably 1980. I could not believe my little Apple could be so useful. Dan is definitely someone I would love to meet.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻We owe everything to inventors
THANK YOU VERY MUCH DAN BRICKLIN
VisiiCalc changed my life. I randomly got a summer position with an engineering office. Used it to enter model data. I took to it like a duck in water, never looked back. Thank you.
People ask what is the most important invention for so and so, I say the spreadsheet is one of those key hole inventions that opened the world up.
We need a movie about this!!!
No, better: a miniseries. Every episode about a product/person. As the series goes on, you discover the interaction between the different legends of the golden age of the microcomputer era. Dan Bricklin, Steve Jobs, Linus Torvalds, Steve Wozniak, Dennis Ritchie, James Gosling, and many others.
The rivalries, the hardware, the software, the non stop innovations, the first hackers, etc. from the 60's to the 90's. One season per decade.
I mean, all these guys are billionaires with big egos, why are they not funding this????
Correction: Only some of those guys “are billionaires”. Back then, many geeks wanted to make the world a better place, not to enrich themselves unbelievably quickly. AFAIK, software couldn’t be copyrighted back then and Bricklin and Frankston did not become billionaires. And they deserve it at least as much as Jobs, where Apple is always trying to get even more of your money.
@@jakelivni9576I meant: let's flatter the egos of the ones that are billionaires, so THEY will fund the movie/series
Yay for Dan! I was using Visicalc on the Apple II in 1980 - 1981!
Didn’t know I had a hero until now but your invention has saved me countless hours over my working life! Thank you Dan!
Thank you, Dan!
I use some sort of spreadsheet almost daily for work and personal use. Thanks Dan
I was a computer programmer in the early 80's when i first saw a spreadsheet, and fell in love with it immediately. What a great idea! A couple of years later i worked for an engineering consulting firm in the D.C. area. Another consultant at the firm told me she was doing work for the Department of Transportation when they asked if she could put their budget breakout on a spreadsheet, which involved determining the distribution of the budget to multiple cities and states in a specific manner. She took two weeks to learn how to use the spreadsheet (I believe it was Excel) and brought the result them, entered the total budget, and they watched while it did the distribution. When it was complete, they were delighted. Then they said "Now we're going to show this to our current contracting company and ask why they're charging us $100,000 to do this."
Finally an actual good TED Talk.
there is ted talk by Linus Torvald... I personally love that Ted talk. I would recommend that to you as well
This is an inspiring Ted Talk!
I actually applauded at the end... and then realized it was a CZcams video and I was sitting all alone. ;-)
Stay healthy and Happy ..Dan ! always share your wisdom !
How nice to see and hear the inventor of electronic spreadsheets. He really made an epic program.
Fantastic video, really interesting to see the thought process around how to label cells - what a stroke of genius that was!
I wonder if he was a chess player? That's how they label the squares on the board.
This dude helped me immensely without we ever know each other. Thanks.
In 1984 a computer buddy and I crunched my numbers for a business proposal on a spreadsheet. We printed several versions showing profit/loss outcomes based on various factors. Did the job in an evening. No MBA, just business experience starting at ground level. My banker told me he had never seen such a comprehensive business projection from a small business proposal. We got our bank backing, and the projections proved accurate.
Excellent talk.
what an amazing personality
Why does this not have way higher views? This is gold dust. You will be surprised at how young children aged 11 to 13 love the logic of spreadsheets!
I fondly recall those days. As I got into the software business in the late 70 / early 80, I discovered that a whole bunch of Apple computers were bought specifically to run Visicalc. I also found people developing application templates for Visicalc, and making decent money doing so. A realization that changed my view of application software.
Hello dear tell me more if you don’t mind..
I salute to you sir...the whole world is indebted to you...through your invention businesses grown and succeed...thank sir...
Hail Bricklin!
My first spreadsheet was the Twin 123, a clone of the Lotus 123.
I have used spreadsheets constantly since 1986.
Thanks Dan.
Brilliant and inspirational.
Thank you Dan
Loved it, thanks!
Totally cool! Happy Spreadsheet Day!!!
I worked at Multics, too, and worked in various departments at Digital Equipment Corporation too. I started programming in 1965 on the LINC, the first laboratory instrument computer. I achieved nothing in 40 years of creative software engineering for companies big and small because I had no ability to market my ideas like the Visicalc team did. I'm just as happy in my life, because I've helped many people through my talent as a meditation teacher. Life is so different for each of us.
I’ve noticed that computer careers are often quite short. Even extremely talented people give up at 40+ and go do other things. I’ve seen so many of my colleagues go down this path. It’s unlike most other professional careers.
@@jakelivni9576 I can't confirm that. Most of the people I worked with over my 40-year career, including myself, only moved on to another company or career when their current company went out of business. While it was going strong, computer software was one of the most stable career paths one could imagine. Today, of course, it's quite different. For flexible engineers, there's always a better company to work for. I don't see any evidence for a claim that "computer careers are short".
Thank you! Sir Dan! It is very helpful to my discussion! I am currently teaching Ms Excel to my grade 6 students.. Among the 3, (Ms word, Ms Excel and Ms Powerpoint) I really love this Ms Excel and it is amazing! Thank you for your great contribution..
The spreadsheet concept revolutionized what one person working alone could hope to accomplish. I had friends that could only afford ONE app and turned Visicalc into a "one-line-at-a-time" word processor as well as database and spreadsheet.!
Argh!!! It's *MS* not Ms!!
Love this! I remember using SuperCalc (I think that was a later generation of VisiCalc) on a XEROX PC in 1982 as an engineering co-op student. It was pretty cool. Later used Lotus, Quattro, Excel, VisiCalc, and for fun compiled mcalc (the example spreadsheet source code provided by Borland to exercise their C complier). I now live and breathe Excel and VBA macros.
Visicalc and Supercalc are different products from different companies. Visicalc was first.
I was exclusively UNIX at the time (rather predates Linux), and it had a spreadsheet program called "vc" on anything that UNIX ran on (things like PDP 11s, VAXen, Cray, Pyramids, and VM/IX on PCs or mainframes running UNIX VMs). It would have been written in C, which wasn't available on other common platforms at the time. [I'm sure the developer was heavily influenced by Bricklin's Visicalc]
At some point (probably '81 or thereabouts), the vc author was smacked with a trademark threat, and wouldn't you know it he renamed it "sc". I haven't seen it in decades tho.
However, both Visicalc and Supercalc were essentially killed by IBM Lotus 1-2-3 (thank ghu that POS expired), Microsoft Office and Corel. The UNIX/Linux environment gravitated towards openoffice which migrated into Sun Microsystems and later acquired by Oracle, who dropped support for it, and transferred it to the Apache Foundation. Meanwhile, LibreOffice (which is essentially plugin-compatible as it was a fork of openoffice) was developed and remains better supported/developed, and is what is mostly the "thing" for Linux/free software environments.
Openoffice and Libreoffice were the only common packages that were portable across Mac, PC and Linux, and you can even run it on Androids or Raspberry Pi quite nicely. It is superbly interoperable with Microsoft Office. So I can live with Libreoffice, and accept/generate stuff Microsoft office is perfectly happy with. Best of all worlds.
I love this guys sense of humour! Watch towards the end....division isn't working yet... a great quote, from a visionary man.
Thank you Dan Brickman, you save life, save lots of tree, your invention helps a small company like me to teach Excel and wow the audience every single week in the heart of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. Excel save life, and it only happens because VisiCal invented first.
Hello dear tell me more if you don’t mind
Simply great.
This guy is an absolute legend. His concept is still going strong.
Electronic Spreadsheets specially MS Excel is one of the most amazing Business Applications which both Small and Large Businesses use 24/7
It may be the only good product Microsoft ever delivered.
@@AndreasDelleske No... Word was and is also amazing. Before windows, there was Word Perfect also good, but paled in comparison. Nothing has come close to beating Word .
@@JM-ig4ed Until you try to make pictures and footnotes appear on the pages they belong...
Bravo Dan Bricklin. It is a joy to know of you. You changed the course of history, America 🇺🇸 and the World. 🌎
Thanx Dan!
Just genius and creative! This guy is the real deal!
Brilliant man who gave us a very important business product. 👍
I am the only one who gets emotional about this video? The sounds of the audience when he talks about the commemorative plaque "OOOW"... it was very emotional
thank you very much, sir
- I just wanted to be in this audience to applaud this man @11:25
This is one video I will show to my kids. I wish I had seen it earlier. In India, we pay respect by touching the feet. I feel paying such respect to this gentlemen.
Very cool. I remember those days. It was an interesting period.
I love this story.
Brilliant. Smart man
Thank you Dan ! I did use Visicalc ! This was well before Quattro Pro and Excel.
Visi Calc on Apple II, Lotus 123 then Excel ON a PC and now Numbers on a Mac, iPad and iPhone. I did them all! Love how all my spreadsheets are now in the cloud and can be viewed and modified anywhere.
Great ... well done Dan Brickman.
Wow! Great story. Thank you.
Hello dear tell me more if you don’t mind.
He is very fortunate to use all generations of a computer. :)
Hardwork pays off!!!
Thank you Mr. Bricklin. I use spreadsheets every day at work, and every payday to manage my finances.
What a great guy!
Congratulations! Fantastic story from a true transformation agent. Thank you for sharing in such a delightful way (specially for us, IT pioneers). Regards from Brazil
I must say you are beautiful, I was captivated by your rare beauty which made me send you a message
Thank you very much the inventor of electronic spread sheet, I;v heard your explanations and the testimonies
about the invention of the e-spread sheets and I came to know that e-spread sheets are used in storing, organizing
the financial, statistical...and other information that may be used in decision making. THANKS, THANKS, THANKS
My first experience with spreadsheets was on an HP desktop unit running VisiCalc that had a 3 inch screen and a micro cassette. It was instrumental in propelling my career.
I just bought a excel to Python course to level up my excel skills….actually I just want to write programs to automate the sheets so I don’t have to do the manual work lol. Bless this man!
In 1985, when I was 12, I was given an Apple II (used) and it came with lot´s of programs in 5 1/4 diskettes... two of them were Visicalc and Visiplot. That was awesome.
I have huge respect for people like Dan Bricklin and other visionaries of that era which shaped the way we do business, communication, design, engineering etc today. The best part is these developments didn't restrict themselves to the USA, their benefits are reaped by people across the world. Thanks Dan Bricklin.
Except The British Chemical company ICI (imperial Chemical Industries) were using electronic spreadsheets 5-6 years BEFORE Visicalc ON MAINFRAMES using IBM 3270 terminals. Years before the Apple Macintosh or IBM PC were created !!!!!
How about that? Good for him and us. I recall first using a spreadsheet that ran on my Commodore 64. Loved it. Later I migrated to Windows and was even more impressed with the enhanced capabilities allowed by more memory space and disk space. I find this program very useful for its ease of use. And utility. Every couple of years there's an interesting enhancement. In the early 90s I read a book on AI and used a spreadsheet to program for about 95% of the various three or four types onto that spreadsheet. So Kohn, and a few others? It's been a while. I was surprised that the notions on a spreadsheet worked at all. Liked that he was or is a tinkerer.