Danny bricklin

Dan Bricklin (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 16, 1951) is an American engineer. He is the creator, along with Bob Frankston, of what is considered the first modern spreadsheet program: VisiCalc.He graduated in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in business management from Harvard University.

He was the one who introduced the concept of Friend-to-friend.

His book, Bricklin on Technology, was published by Wiley in May 2009. For his work with VisiCalc, Bricklin is often called "the father of the spreadsheet& #3. 4;.

Biography

Bricklin was born to a Jewish family in Philadelphia where he attended Akiba Hebrew Academy during his high school years. She started her college with a math major, but soon switched to computer science. She earned a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973, where he was a resident of Bexley Hall.

Upon graduating from MIT, Bricklin worked for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) until 1976 where he was part of the team that worked on WPS-8 when he began working for FasFax, a manufacturer of cash registers. In 1977, he decided to return to school, earning an Master of Business Administration from Harvard University in 1979.

While a student at Harvard Business School, Bricklin co-developed VisiCalc in 1979, making it the first electronic spreadsheet available for home and office use. It ran on an Apple II Computer and was considered a fourth generation program.

VisiCalc is widely recognized for fueling the rapid growth of the personal computer industry. Instead of making financial projections with manual spreadsheets and having to do arithmetic on each individual cell, VisiCalc allows the user to change any cell and has the unique feature that the entire spreadsheet can be calculated automatically. This left behind 20 hours of work, taking only 15 minutes, as well as fostering creativity.

Career

Art of Computer Software

A badge in honor of Bricklin's contribution to Visicalc at Boston Logan Airport.

In 1979, Bricklin and Frankston founded Software Arts, Inc. and began selling VisiCalc, through an independent company called VisiCorp. Along with co-founder Bob Frankston, he began writing versions of the program for the Tandy TRS-80, the Commodore PET, and the Atari 800. Shortly after its release, VisiCalc became a $100 bestseller.

Software Arts also published TK/Solver and "y Spotlight, "a desktop organizer for the I.B.M. personal computer"

Bricklin received the Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1981 for VisiCalc. Bricklin was unable to patent VisiCalc since software programs could not be protected by patents at the time.

Bricklin was president of Software Arts until 1985, when Software Arts was acquired by Lotus. He left and founded Software Garden.

Software Garden

Dan Bricklin founded Software Garden, a small software application developer and consulting company, in 1985. The company's goal was to produce and market the "Dan Bricklin Demo Program." The program allowed users to create demos of their programs even before they were written, and was also used to create tutorials for Windows-based programs. Other versions released soon after included "demo-it!". He remained the company's president until he co-founded the Slate Corporation in 1990. In 1992, he became vice president of the Phoenix-based Slate Corporation and developed At Hand, a spreadsheet based on "pen computing". When Slate closed in 1994, Bricklin returned to Software Garden.

His "Dan Bricklin Overview Viewer" (described by The New York Times as "a visual way to display information in Windows-based software") was released in November 1994.

Trellix Corporation

In 1995, Bricklin founded the Trellix Corporation, named for the Trellix Site Builder.

Interland (now Web.com) purchased Trellix in 2003 and Bricklin became Interland's CTO until early 2004.

Current job

Bricklin continues to serve as president of Software Garden, a small company that develops and markets the software tools he creates, as well as provides consulting and speaking services.

Has launched Note Taker HD, an application that integrates handwritten notes on Apple's iPad tablet.

He is also developing wikiCalc, a collaborative basic spreadsheet that runs on the Web.

He is currently the CTO of Alpha Software in Burlington, Massachusetts, a company that creates tools for easily developing cross-platform mobile business applications.

Affiliations

In 1994, Bricklin was inducted as a member of the Association for Computing Machinery. He is a founding member of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council and has served on the boards of the Software Publishers Association and the Boston Computer Society.

He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2003 for the invention and creation of the electronic spreadsheet.

Awards

In 1981, Bricklin received the Grace Murray Hopper Award for VisiCalc.

In 1996, Bricklin was awarded the IEEE Computer Society's Computer Entrepreneur Award for pioneering the development and commercialization of the spreadsheet and the profound changes it fostered in business and industry.

In 2003, Bricklin received the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award for leading technological change. He was recognized for using information technology in a way that transformed the industry. He has received an "Honorary Doctorate of Humanities" from Newbury College. He also became a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

In 2004, he was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for promoting the utility of personal computers through the development of the electronic spreadsheet VisiCalc".

Bricklin:

• appeared in the documentary Triumph of the Nerds of 1996 as well as in the documentary Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks of 2005 in both cases discussing the development of VisiCalc..
• introduced the term "friend to friend networks" on August 11, 2000.
• also introduced the term cornucopia of common goods almost at the same time.