Word: visicalc
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...raises the level of competition and also makes life tougher on smaller firms. The single brilliant programmer working on his home machine who packages his product in a Baggie may not survive any more. Says Daniel Fylstra, chairman of Visi-Corp. (1982 sales: more than $35 million), which markets VisiCalc, a financial forecasting program for businesses that is the most popular ever written: "Before, anyone with a reasonable product could make a go of it. Now you're seeing larger and larger sums directed toward marketing. Brand names are becoming more and more important...
That winter Bricklin, an M.I.T graduate and confessed computer "nerd" since his teens in Philadelphia, and an M.I.T. buddy, Bob Frankston, 33, worked day and night to develop a program for doing such number crunching on a small computer. The result was an electronic spread sheet: VisiCalc (visible calculator). Initially, VisiCalc got a lukewarm reception from computer stores. But when another B School grad, Daniel Fylstra, 31, who had just started up his own company, Personal Software Inc., stepped up the marketing, VisiCalc took off. Word began to get out about its enormous powers. With only a few presses...
Some 400,000 copies of VisiCalc have been sold (retail price: $200 and up, depending on the version), making it the hottest piece of software, other than games, ever produce for the personal computer. It is also probably the most widely pirated and imitated (the rip-offs are nicknamed "VisiClones" and "CalcAlikes"). Sighs Bricklin: "I suppose if imitation is flattery, we've been flattered quite a bit." Headquartered in a refurbished chocolate factory in the Boston suburb of Wellesley, Mass., Bricklin's firm, Software Arts, now has more than 80 employees, as many computer terminals as phones...
...bench mark for success among independent programmers remains the record of Daniel Bricklin, a Harvard Business School graduate, and Robert Frankston, a computer scientist, who created VisiCalc in 1979. With nearly 400,000 copies sold for up to $495 apiece, VisiCalc, a financial-analysis system for businesses, remains the single bestselling piece of software. Like other successful programmers, Bricklin, 31, and Frankston, 33, have expanded their business well beyond the prototypical home attic where many first get their start. They reinvested the VisiCalc income (more than $11 million) in their new company, Software Arts, with headquarters in an old chocolate...
...Apple Computer Inc.'s distinctive trademark, a multicolored apple with a bite missing. Others have slightly changed names like Apolo. Asian manufacturers have so successfully duplicated the silicon micro chips in the core of the Apple machines that the imitations can use a broad range of software, from VisiCalc, the top-selling business budgeting and planning program, to video games like Snack Attack and Rocket Intercept...