First Demo of VisiCalc

Thirty-two years ago today, on May 12, 1979, Dan Bricklin demonstrated the new spreadsheet program, VisiCalc, at the 4th West Coast Computer Faire, in San Francisco.

On his Benlo Park website, Peter Jennings describes the event:

We rented a special room to secretly demonstrate VisiCalc to key industry luminaries. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Adam Osborne, Ted Nelson, Vern Raburn, Ben Rosen, Portia Isaacson, Chuck Peddle and many others were treated to early demonstrations by Dan Bricklin, Dan Fylstra or myself. After each demonstration we tried to pick their brains for marketing advice. The key question was what should we charge. The range of suggestions was $25 to $400 a copy, with most of the suggestions at the low end of the range.

On his website, there’s a photo of Dan Bricklin demonstrating the new spreadsheet program, on May 12th 1979.

_______