Dan Bricklin
Dan Bricklin
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| Bricklin, Daniel Singer | |
| Born | July 16, 1951 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
Career
Dan Bricklin, often hailed as the “father of the spreadsheet,” is a computer programmer and entrepreneur whose work fundamentally changed the landscape of personal computing. Born in 1951 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Bricklin showed early promise in math and technology, eventually enrolling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned a degree in electrical engineering and computer science in 1973. He later received his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1979—an educational pairing that would uniquely position him to create a software product that bridged the worlds of business and computing.
While attending Harvard Business School, Bricklin conceived the idea that would make him famous: an electronic spreadsheet program that would simplify financial modeling and eliminate the tedious task of recalculating numbers by hand or with calculators. Working with programmer Bob Frankston, Bricklin co-created VisiCalc— short for “Visible Calculator”—a program that allowed users to enter and manipulate data in a grid-like interface on a personal computer. Released in 1979 for the Apple II, VisiCalc became the first killer app for personal computers, giving business professionals a compelling reason to buy a computer in the first place. Steve Jobs would later remark that people bought Apple computers just to run VisiCalc.
VisiCalc's impact was profound. It demonstrated that personal computers were not just hobbyist tools or curiosities, but essential productivity machines. Bricklin and Frankston co-founded Software Arts Inc. to develop and sell VisiCalc, with marketing and distribution handled by Personal Software (later renamed VisiCorp). Although VisiCalc was a commercial success and helped ignite the personal computing revolution, the company faced growing competition— most notably from Lotus 1-2-3, which overtook VisiCalc in the early 1980s.
After leaving Software Arts, Bricklin continued to innovate. He founded Software Garden, Inc., his own consulting and software development firm, where he created a number of notable products including TK!Solver, a rule-based mathematical modeling system, and Dan Bricklin’s Demo Program, a pioneering tool for creating software prototypes without writing code. These programs reflected his ongoing interest in making computing more accessible and powerful for a broad range of users.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Bricklin remained a thoughtful voice in the evolving tech world. He developed Note Taker HD, a handwriting app for the iPad, and became an advocate for user-friendly design in mobile applications. He also launched a podcast, wrote essays on technology, and continued speaking at conferences about the intersection of computing, society, and creativity.
Bricklin has received numerous honors for his contributions to computing. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a recipient of the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and was inducted as a Fellow of the Computer History Museum in 2004. In 2013, he received the CHM Fellow Award “for co-creating VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet, and bootstrapping the personal computer software industry.”
Today, Dan Bricklin is recognized not just for inventing a groundbreaking software product, but for helping to usher in a new era of computing where individuals— not just corporations— had the power to compute, model, and create.
List of major works
External links
- Wikipedia
- Computer History Museum
- Programmers At Work
- www.bricklin.com
- Software People Page 11
- Software People Page 38
- Software People Page 120
