Dan BricklinBorn 16 Jul 1951.American computer scientist who with Bob Frankston created VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet computer program (1979) which created a market beyond hobbyists for the emerging personal computers. Businesses found the program very useful because of the speed and accuracy of its calculations. Originally written in 6502 assembly language to run on a 32K-byte Apple II, it was soon ported to virtually all major 6502- and Z80-based personal computers then available. They did not reap huge financial profits from the spreadsheet program, despite eventually selling over a half-million copies by 1983, because at the time, copyright protection was not generally sought for software, and it was subsequently surpassed by Lotus 1-2-3.« |
