VisiCalc Demo by Dan Bricklin

If you’re a true spreadsheet nerd, watch this video, with VisiCalc demo by Dan Bricklin, using an Apple II emulator. It’s fascinating to hear the reasons for some of the design decisions they made, when building the first spreadsheet for personal computers. And remember, when we celebrate Spreadsheet Day this year, on October 17, 2019, it will be a celebration of VisiCalc’s 40th anniversary.

Computer Science Class

The VisiCalc demo was a presentation for the Spring 2019 class in Interaction Techniques class, in the Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science program, with professor is Brad Myers. Professor Myers asked Dan Bricklin to focus on the interaction techniques that VisiCalc used, rather than its algorithms.

I could find any way to embed the video here, so you can watch it at this link, on the Carnegie Mellon site:  VisiCalc Demo by Dan Bricklin

Viewing Tips

The full video runs for an hour and 18 minutes, but the VisiCalc demo ends at the 50 minute mark. The rest of the video is a demo of another one of Dan Bricklin’s products – Demo – an early prototyping tool.

There is a speed control at the bottom right of the window, where you can choose a faster speed for the video playback. I watched at 1.25x speed, and didn’t have any trouble following the demo.

Dan Bricklin Tweet

I found this video from a link that Dan Bricklin posted on Twitter. Here’s how he described the video:

• I was video guest in @bradamyers‬ Interaction Techniques class ‪@SCSatCMU‬ today. I ended up showing VisiCalc in detail w/why choices were made & my Demo II prototyping tool. Most extensive VC demo & only video of Demo I’ve done. 80 minutes

VisiCalc Mind Map

At the beginning of the demo, Dan Bricklin showed a VisiCalc mind map, with their design ideas.

You can see a copy of the mind map on the VisiCalc pages of his website. It’s on the page named “The Idea”, about halfway down the page.

Apple II Keyboard

Around the 10:30 mark, you’ll see a photo of the Apple II keyboard, which only has 2 arrow keys – left and right. The first prototype of VisiCalc used those arrow keys, and pressing the space bar changed the movement to up and down.

Here’s a different photo of the Apple II, from Wikipedia (copyright free).

There wasn’t much memory in those old computers, and at the 15:55 mark, Bricklin mentions the list of command letters, at the top of the screen. “We didn’t have enough memory for the words…this was really tight coding.”

To see all the commands, take a look at the photo of the VisiCalc for Apple II reference card on Bricklin’s website.

Also, at the 18:36 mark, Bricklin  explains why he used the slash key with commands, instead of the Ctrl key, which was used in other programs —  “I was born with bent little fingers.”

More Highlights

Here are a few more highlights from the VisiCalc demo video, and go to the video page to watch the full VisiCalc demo.

23:45 — Professor mentions that these commands still work in Excel, and Dan shows Excel
26:23 — Why the letters are at the top (there are emulator problems at this point, and the explanation starts 30:15)
31:43 — Limit for number of digits — based on US budget total at that time
35:45 — No precedence (order of operations), like cheaper calculators
50:10 — End of VisiCalc presentation, followed by Dan Bricklin’s Demo II

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VisiCalc Demo by Dan Bricklin

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