Dan Bricklin – VisiCalc Co-Founder
You can find personal notes, photos and videos from Dan Bricklin, in the VisiCalc section of his personal website: http://www.bricklin.com/visicalc.htm
In the following video, Dan Bricklin reads from his book, “Bricklin on Technology”, about the first public announcement of VisiCalc, in June 1979.
Bob Frankston
In the two videos below, Bob Frankston, co-creator of VisiCalc, reads and comments on the paper he delivered in June 1979 at its debut at the National Computer Conference.
Part 1
Part 2
VisiCalc Shipment and Sales
When was VisiCalc shipped out? When selecting a date for Spreadsheet Day, I found the following sources that showed October 17, 1979 as the date that the first fill copies were shipped out. These sources were key players in VisiCalc’s development and sales – Peter Jennings and Dan Bricklin.
Shipped October 17th
Peter Jennings, one of Dan Fylstra’s partners at Personal Software/VisiCorp, was responsible for their MicroChess program that helped fund the early advance royalty payments for VisiCalc.
You can find his VisiCalc notes on his personal website: http://www.benlo.com/visicalc/visicalc4.html
On his VisiCalc page, Jennings has notes on the shipment and early sales of VisiCalc:
“The first copy of VisiCalc for the Apple ][ (Version 1.37) went out the door on October 17, 1979. By the end of the month, we had shipped 1293 copies.”
Byte Interview
In 1989, Byte magazine interviewed Dan Bricklin and Bob Franston, for the article “Ten Years of Rows and Columns” published in Byte, issue 13/1989, pp. 326-328.
In a sidebar to that article, Birthing the Visible Calculator, Bricklin mentioned October 17th as the date that VisiCalc came out:
“VisiCalc came out October 17, 1979, at $99, and people paid hundreds of dollars for the board just for the extra 10K bytes of memory.”
October 19th Delivered
On Dan Bricklin’s Visicalc site, he shows a note that Dan Fylstra received his copy of VisiCalc on October 19th. Bricklin also noted that his copy arrived the following day, October 20th.
On that page, Bricklin marked October 19th, 2009, as the 30th anniversary of VisiCalc.
Dan Bricklin Tweets – October 2021
On October 19, 2021, I had the following friendly exchange with Dan Bricklin on Twitter. He was marking that day as the anniversary of VisiCalc.
Here’s his first tweet, with a follow-up question from Hjalmar Gislason:
So are we all celebrating #spreadsheetday two days too early @DanB?
— Hjalmar Gislason (@hjalli) October 19, 2021
Next, I replied with the source for our Spreadsheet Day date.
Date based on quote from Dan Bricklin “VisiCalc came out October 17, 1979, at $99” 1/2 way down this page. Worth celebrating on any date though! https://t.co/P0r9IWmDl5
— Debra Dalgleish (@ddalgleish) October 19, 2021
Here are the next two tweets from Dan Bricklin, and he’s okay with us celebrating on October 17th.
I don’t mind celebrating on the 17th. Something probably happened then. Any day is great for me. 🙂 My notes have me meeting with a commercial insurance agent on the 17th but no mention of VisiCalc.
— Dan Bricklin (@DanB) October 19, 2021
Next, I shared my other source for the October 17th date:
Alternate source was Peter Jennings “ https://t.co/vkDDPzD5bd
— Debra Dalgleish (@ddalgleish) October 19, 2021
Dan Bricklin’s next two tweets are shown below
Of course, Peter’s write-up was after the fact, so I don’t know what he based it on. It’s fine to use the 17th as the day. Maybe all shipping from manufacturing was on the 17th, and even they (the publisher) didn’t receive it until the 19th along with everybody else.
— Dan Bricklin (@DanB) October 19, 2021
So, we’ll continue to celebrate Spreadsheet Day on October 17th, with the okay from Dan Bricklin.
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