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Triumph of the Nerds: Part 1: Impressing Their Friends
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[Music] [Applause]
hi I'm Bob Fringe Lee I'm here to tell
you the incredible story about personal
computers took over the world why am I
telling you this at a basketball game
well I like the game but mainly it's because
[Applause]
his name is Paul Allen and everything
you see here belongs to him the Portland
Trailblazers basketball team their arena
even the dancers
thanks to personal computers he has
eight billion dollars to spend on such toys
toys
20 years ago Allen and his high school
friend Bill Gates were running a two-man
software company called Microsoft
today Allen is richer than God and Gates
20 years ago young men like Paul Allen
and Bill Gates invented the personal
computer and in doing so launched a
revolution that's changed the way we
live work and communicate it's hard to
believe that 20 years ago there were no
personal computers now it's the third
largest industry in the world somewhere
between energy production and the
illegal drugs but the most amazing thing
of all is that it happened by accident
because a bunch of disenfranchised nerds
wanted to impress their friends [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
this is the story of how a handful of
guys launched an industrial revolution
how they change the culture of business
how they made history I feel incredibly
lucky to be at exactly the right place
in Silicon Valley at exactly the right
time historically where this invention
has taken form it wasn't like we both
thought it was gonna go a long ways it
was like we both do it for fun and even
though we're gonna lose some money
probably we'll just have been able to
say we had a company
all of us would get together and just
hope we were right that the PC would
become a big thing you know I stop and
say wow the PC really has and become
part of the very fabric the way people
live and we certainly surged with it and
I just stop and say he pretty incredible ride
[Music]
most of these people come from the place
I call home
the Silicon Valley south of San
Francisco California
growing up here near the electronics
companies that give the place its name
these founders of the PC revolution were
for the most part middle class white
kids from good suburban homes but it's
not their homes we're interested in it's
their garages [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
this is my garage and this is all my
junk and probably one of the few guys in
Silicon Valley who actually has room in
his garage for a car most everyone else
seems to use theirs to start computer
companies and create great fortunes but
I don't have a fortune I'm a failure
I've written computer programs that
almost ran and I've designed and built
hardware devices that frankly didn't
work at all but I'm the ideal guy to
tell the story of the personal computer
business because I'm its premiere gossip
columnist and everyone tells me all
their secrets and
this is my home where I write a gossip
column for a computing magazine sorry
about the mess
institutions in constant change like the
PC industry are driven by rumor and
gossip and I thrive on both my
electronic mail address is deluged with
inside information about everything from
product flaws to who's sleeping with whom
whom
what ties these gossipers together is a
desire for truth these people and their
love of technology have fueled the PC
revolution to understand them is to
understand that revolution so let's go
meet Edwin chin on a Saturday morning at
this could be 1976 or 1996 because there
is always a new generation of techies
like Edwin who hear the calling most
other kids are watching TV but not Edwin
you know interested in electronics and
technologies and a hobby since I started
when I was like six or seven
how old are you now Edwin 10 [Music]
[Music]
it's no coincidence that the only woman
in the vicinity looks bored because this
is a boy thing the obsession of a
particular type of boy who would rather
struggle with an electronic box than
with a world of unpredictable people we
call them engineers programmers hackers
and techies but mainly we call them
nerds I think a nerd is a person who
uses the telephone to talk to other
people about telephones
and a computer nerd therefore somebody
who uses a computer in order to use a computer
computer
and people have like different degrees
of passion different types of passion
you know some people like they just like
live databases and like fifth normal
form is just like Nirvana and like they
just quest for it you know like that's
what do your friends think of you well
but I don't mind I'm used to being
called a nerd
can't have other people stop your dreams
very wire and in Silicon Valley the
dream is to grow up to become a boy like this
Graham Spencer is chief programmer for
architects software six guys who
graduated from Stanford University and
started a company just because they like
each other
this is a modern day startup but at
heart it's no different from PC pioneers
like Apple or Microsoft nerds who share
a dream their hobby is their business
and the culture they've created is
identical to that of a thousand other
technology companies first they dumped
the idea of nine-to-five in this
industry you can work any eighty hours
per week you like my cat which I used to
cover my eyes and oh yes sleep in the
early morning well everybody's coming in
we didn't even obey a 24-hour clock we'd
come in and program for a couple days
straight we'd you know four or five of
us when it was time to eat we'd all get
in our cars kind of race over to the
restaurant and sit and talk about what
we're doing sometimes I get excited
talking about things I'd forget to eat
but then you just go back and program
some more it was us on our friends those
were fun days [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
let's look in the refrigerator whoa
we have coke and cold pizza two liters
of coke a day I do liters of coke a day
and and do you think of it like this
brain food that keeps me going that you
know listen to heavy metal and get
caffeinated and in hack [Music]
[Music]
I'd sit down in my room on the floor
with sheets of paper spread all around
with my computer design I was working on
and always I noticed that I was up
pretty late at night and I had lots of
combination of stale pizza and body odor
and sort of spilt Cola kind of ground
into the rug
I'd brought some spaghetti to work and
then forgot to wash out the container
for the last couple of days maybe six or
seven if I had to be honest oh
that smells bad
eating bathing having a girlfriend
having an active social life is it's a
dental it gets in the way of code time
you know writing code is is the primary
force it drives our lives so anything
what is it about the internal logic of a
computer that's so enticing for one
thing such logic can be understood as
opposed to things that can't be
understood at all like the motivations
of young women say or of the French let
me explain
time for the cringe Li crash course and
basic computers part 1 this is a
mainframe computer all of these cabinets
are one machine in the old days all
computers were this size they were
tended by engineers and white coats a
kind of priesthood who took their jobs
very seriously
now all computers work pretty much the
same whether it's a giant that serves
2,000 users like this one or a little
notebook that serves only me they
process numerical data adding
multiplying comparing fact is if you can
quantify it a computer can handle it
it's the emotional stuff they don't know
what to do with the data must be put
into a special binary code consisting
only of ones and zeroes and you have to
give the computer instructions also in
code to tell it exactly what to do with
the data and in what order these
instructions are called a program in the
early days you put in the instructions
by flipping switches or loaded them from
paper tape this was called machine
language it made computers a pain to use
even worse every type of computer spoke
a different machine language the ENIAC
would compute the 32nd trajectory of a
shell in 20 seconds operators required
two days to program it to do so
then a US Navy captain named Grace
Hopper solved the problem she invented a
computer language English words that the
computer itself could translate into
binary code now users could type whole
list of instructions into a computer
rather than flipping those damn switches
like most things having to do with
computers that first language had a
silly name COBOL it was followed by
other languages like Fortran and basic
and they all made computing just a bit
more user-friendly so when some nerd
tells you he's been up all night
programming or writing software or
hacking code what he really means is
he's been typing long list of
instructions in his computer
mainframe computers were far from
personal they sat in big air-conditioned
rooms at insurance companies phone
companies and the bank and their main
function was to get us confused with
some other guy named cringe Lee who was
a deadbeat and had a criminal record
eventually computer terminals did begin
to appear in some schools but most of us
paid no attention but there was usually
one kid who did pay attention falling in
love with the digital purity of those
ones and zeros he was the nerd and I
took this book home that described the
pdp-8 computer and it just odd it was
just like a Bible to me I mean all these
things that for some reason I'd fallen
in love with like you might fall in love
with a card game called magic or you
might fall in love with doing crossword
puzzles or something else or playing a
musical instrument I fell in love with
these little descriptions of computers
on their inside and was a little
mathematics I can work out some problems
on paper and solve it and see how it's
done and I could come up with my own
solutions and feel good in inside so you
would keyboard these commands in and
then you would wait for a while and then
the thing
would tell you something out but even
with that it was still remarkable
especially for a ten-year-old that you
could write a program in basic let's say
or Fortran and actually this machine
would sort of take your
it would it would sort of execute your
idea and give you back some results and
if they were the results that you
predicted your program really worked it
was an incredibly thrilling experience
nerds wanted their own computers right
from the beginning but it took a
technological breakthrough to make that
possible this is it the chip the
microprocessor this is what allows you
to have a mainframe computer on your
desk in the 1950s mainframes were as big
as this garage and that's because they
were filled with thousands of these
vacuum tubes or valves eventually the
valves were made much smaller and
replaced with transistors still too big
however to make a computer that could
fit on your desk what that took was
further miniaturization here we a single
piece of silicon etch with thousands of
transistors this microprocessor holds
more than a million transistors and
that's the secret of the personal
computer and that's why they call it
these are the people who invented the
Intel was started twenty-eight years ago
by a handful of guys after a row with
their old boss their microprocessors
Intel not only invented the chip they
are responsible for the laid-back
Silicon Valley working style everyone
was on a first-name basis there were no
reserved parking places no offices only
cubicles it's still true today here's
Gordon Moore is one of the Intel
founders worth three billion dollars
with money like that I'd have a door in
a business like this the people with the
power are the ones that have the
understanding of what's going on not
necessarily the ones on top it's very
important that those people that have
the knowledge are the ones that make the
decisions so we set up something where
everyone who had the knowledge at an
equal say what was going on
Intel's microprocessors kept getting
more powerful they soon had enough
horsepower to run a whole computer only
Intel didn't appreciate the brilliance
of their own product seeing it as useful
mainly for calculators or traffic lights
Intel had all the elements necessary to
invent the PC business but they just
didn't get it
this is the chip that launched the
this is the magazine that announced it
in January 1975 featured on the cover
was the world's first personal computer
the Altair 8800 it was the crazy idea of
an ex airforce officer from Georgia Edie Roberts
Roberts
if you look at it you know it was kind
of grandiose almost megalomaniac kind of
scheme you know and right now I couldn't
do it because I could see right off
there's no way you could do this to even
anyway you could do this
but at that time you know we just like the
the
the benefits of age and experience we
twenty years after Edie Roberts flash of
brilliance this exhibit is being held to
celebrate the anniversary of the Altair
like every other pc pioneer had built
his computer just because he wanted one
to play with there were some of us that
lusted after computers really at that
time all the computers in the world
tended to be in big centers and you had
to get permission to get close to them
and it was a you know you said nobody
could nobody had access to computers
then and the idea that you could have
your own computer and do whatever you
wanted to with it whenever you wanted to
and where was all this happening it was
far from Silicon Valley Intel or IBM out
in the desert near the airport in
Albuquerque New Mexico
Edie Roberts ran a calculator company
called MIT's having an ugly building
wasn't its only problem MIT's was going
bankrupt nobody was buying calculators
and Edie needed sixty five thousand
dollars just to stay afloat we went to
the bank and had a late night meeting
and the issue was whether we closed
midst down or Kippur they loaned us an
additional 65,000 and I was asked how
many machines that I think we would sell
in the next in the next year after was
introduced and I said 800 it was
considered a wild-eyed optimist at that
within a month after it was introduced
where we get 250 orders a day
the Altair wasn't even a computer it was
a computer kit whoa this is pretty well
you had to build it yourself and even
then it usually didn't work
still the demand was amazing and there
were actually people that came to MIT's
a couple people with camper trailers and
camped out in the parking lot waiting
for their machines I mean they were so
eager I mean I think everybody had sort
of daydream to Walter Mitty about owning
computer the surprise was that it would
be possible for the average college
student for example who was living on
bare subsistence to actually buy a computer
computer
this is what really amazed me was that
people were so there was a sort of a
pent-up demand for having your own computer
computer
and if it could be that cheap what a
this is an Altair computer the first
personal computer and not just any out
there this is Altair serial number two
the second one made the first Altair
made was sent off to be photographed at
a magazine it was lost in the mail so
this is the oldest personal computer in
the world
pretty historic junk but the question is
what do you do with it I mean it it has
a front panel with switches that you can
click back and forth and some lights but
in the back there's no place to connect
to keyboard there's no place to connect
a monitor there's no place to connect a
printer in fact there's practically
nothing at all that you can really do
with this thing but back then
the Nerds formed clubs to talk about
their new toy one of the first was the
homebrew Computer Club which met on
Wednesday evenings in a hall rented from
Stanford University in Silicon Valley
presiding over near Anarchy was Lee
felsenstein who pretended to be in
charge I would start the meeting by
making a horrendous loud noise
because everyone was talking and I had
to get some attention somehow and I
would use it to call on the person in
question I have made threatening
most of us were in the electronics
industry to a certain extent there was
also a stratum of physicians and there
were a lot of radio amateurs for
instance finding a new technology that
wasn't stale but most of us were at a
sort of middle level downwards we saw
ourselves as crazed ignored geniuses or
possibly geniuses but at least we could
each hope to get our hands on a computer
the very uselessness of the Altair is
what drove the hobbyists together Roger
melon and Harry garland started an early
computer company they came here to meet
others and to figure out just what the
heck could be done with this new toy a
solution in search of a problem that I
can see the Altair was tedious to use at
first the only way that data and
instructions could be given to the
computer was by flipping switches take
something trivial like two plus two each
- needed eight different switches to be
flipped the nanites which was used to
load them all add required another nine
switches the answer for was if the third
light from the left turned on Eureka so
if you had a program that was a hundred
bytes long you and I go through this
procedure a hundred times to load that
in the memory it took a long time I bet
it did and what happened if you lost
power or you lost your way in the middle
you cried
the Altair may have been frustrating but
it drove the Nerds to experiment finding
real uses for the useless box turning it
from a curiosity to a computer steve
dompier set up an altar
laborious lakitu program into it
somebody knocked the plug out of the
wall and he had to do that all over
again but nobody knew what this was about
about
after all it wasn't just gonna sit in
flashes lights no you put a little
transistor radio next to the El tear and
he would by manipulating the length of
loops in the software could play tunes
the radio began playing the fool on the hill
dadada and the tinny little tunes that
you could tell we're coming from the
noise that the computer was generated
being picked up by the radio everybody
rose and applauded I propose that he
received the stripped Phillips screw
award for finding a use for something
previously thought useless but I think
everyone was too busy applauding to even
hear me it was a very exciting thing it
was probably the first thing the Altair
turning the Altair into a useful tool
required a programming language so users
could type their programs in rather than
flipping switches what it needed was a
version of some big computer language
like basic only modified for the PC this
was called a basic interpreter but it
didn't yet exist because the experts all
thought that not even basic was basic
enough to fit inside the tiny Altair
memory yet again the experts were wrong
here comes the guy who solved the
problem twenty years after finishing the
first microcomputer basic Paul Allen is
returning to Albuquerque for a
celebration of that event this time with
his 15 million-dollar jet and three foot
at a time when I was killing brain cells
he has come to eat rubber chicken in
honor of the Altair's 20th anniversary
Allen co-founded Microsoft with his
younger buddy from high school Bill
Gates one day in Boston I was in Harvard
Square and I covered popular chronics
with this thing that looked like what
I'd been imagining and so I grabbed it
off the shelf I looked at it and I
bought it and I you know ran back to
Bill's dorm and I think he was probably
playing poker that night and usually
losing money at that point
that's okay I
showed that to me then okay here was a
company that would be needing software
and he's okay well we got a call we got
to call these guys up and see if this
thing is for real we realized that
things were starting to happen and just
because we'd had a vision for a long
time of where this chip could go what it
could mean that didn't mean the industry
was gonna wait for us while I stayed and
finished my degree at Harvard so called
up and you know we told we've got this
basic it it's just you know for your
machine it's you know it's it's not that
far from being done and we'd like to
come out and show teeth so we created
this basic interpreter Paul took the
paper tape and and flew out in fact the
night before he he got some sleep while
I double-checked everything to make sure
that we had had it all right but I'd had
no idea but it was really gonna be like
to try to run the software I had never
been running an actual computer before
he was very nervous about whether this
would actually work and he got to the
office and we all gathered around and he
put his fingers on the switches and he
loaded basic in with paper tape into the
Altair I was just I was so nervous I
just this is just awkward and it came up
and it could do a few little simple
things and it was amazing when Paul
called me up and said the thing that
worked the first time and of course it
was incredibly fast and it pretty dope
memory size and I think Bill said well
it printed something
oh that was that was unbelievable the
fact that it really worked was was it
was a breakthrough maybe there wouldn't
be a Microsoft if it hadn't if the
screen hadn't come alive who knows it
after the demo succeeded bill forgot
about finishing University afraid of
missing his chance to dominate the new
industry he joined Allen in what was
then the center of world micro computing
research among the sleazy bars and gas
stations of Albuquerque New Mexico [Music]
[Music]
and they lived across the street from
MIT's in the sundowner motel and the
prostitutes and the drug dealers are out
on the corner they were writing basic
for the Altair computer and
gradually they actually started
Microsoft here in Albuquerque so we
heard some some of our high school
friends basically come down and
stay with us in our apartment which
became very crowded we were pretty young
we started when I was 19 and so he just
had a lot of a lot of energy they worked
really hard they listened to really loud
music I could hardly stand to go in the
software room sometimes because the
music would be banging off the walls
you know we usually go out deep pizzas
and then go out and watch
they would work all night long and there
were days when Bill Gates would be
sleeping on the floor and the software
lab and sometimes would be buildings to
other guys all you know sitting on
tables around the apartment with stacks
and stacks of paper right true
converting the basic for the idat I
still hold the source code by heart and
that was a
work of love when we just kept tuning
and tuning that thing and so that kind
of craftsmanship paid off [Music]
[Music]
basic let the Altair be used for both
fun stuff and real work people attach
terminals to the computer and began
writing games word processors and
accounting programs most of us didn't
notice but soon there was a thriving
industry for enthusiasts by the end of
1975 dozens of other companies were
building microcomputers
we created an industry and I think that
goes completely unnoticed I mean there
was nothing every aspect of the industry
where you saw that software hardware
application stuff dealerships you name
it was all done at this it was a wild
time it was a very exciting time and
that the first user convention well we
got people to come in and tell us what
they were doing what they were excited
about and other companies like
processor technology or M sire command
Co got going is add-on companies these
companies are long forgotten but they
were the humble beginnings of the of the
PC industry
left in the hands of those early
hobbyists the PC might have never made
it to the shopping mall
reaching the wider market required a
different type of vision enter the
flower children of California who
from the safety of secret committees
it talked about the pain Juhu remember
that the 60s happened in the early 70s
right so we have to remember that and
that's sort of when I came of age so I
saw a lot of this and to me the spark of
that was that there was something beyond
it's the same thing that causes people
to want to be poets instead of bankers
and I think that's a wonderful thing and
I think that that same spirit can be put
into products and those products can be
manufactured and given to people and
they can sense that spirit to help you
understand all this I will now take off
my clothes why he says well frame relay
is scalable Jim Warren knows better than
most what the hippie movement did for
the PC a 60s radical himself he staged
the West Coast computer fair for a time
the biggest computer show in the world
the fair was where the PC really arrived
it's also where Jim got rich so Jim is
this where you hold all your meetings um
as many as possible
sure why not this is how Silicon Valley
entrepreneurs connect business I don't
know how there's how entrepreneurs
believe it or not and Jim once taught
Jim was immediately fascinated by the PC
like many Bay Area hippies the
California counterculture was crucial to
the PCs development and and the whole
spirit there was working together was
sharing you shared your dope you shared
your bed you shed
you said your life you shed your hopes
and a whole bunch of us had the same
community spirit and that permeated the
whole homebrew Computer Club as soon as
somebody would solve a problem they'd
come running down to the homebrew
Computer Club next meeting say hey
everybody you know that problem that all
of us have been trying to figure out how
to solve here's the solution isn't this
wonderful aren't I great guy and it's my
contention that that is a major
component of why Silicon Valley was able
to develop the technology as rapidly as
it did because we were all sharing
everybody one
out of this creative show-and-tell came
Apple Computer the first mass-market PC
company the Apple founders a couple of
recent graduates from Homestead High
were regulars at homebrew meetings Steve
Wozniak was the technical wizard and
Steve Jobs was the visionary who saw
microcomputers as a possible business
the first Apple Computer was primitive
it was cobbled together by woz to
impress his friends at the homebrew
meetings everybody was interested in
computers so I started getting a crowd
around me because even though I was too
shy to raise my hand and say anything in
a club meeting after the club meetings I
would put my my computer that I had
built and every week it had a little bit
more working on it too but I would set
it down and let people type on the
keyboard I would explain what's in it if
they come up to me and ask a question I
can answer
you know nowadays I would have the
ability to tell them what I got in
groups started gathering around me and
Steve Jobs saw that I had a lot of
interest around me at the club and he
said let's start selling it and let's
make this company came up with the name
Apple and and
Apple was at best a funky company
started by a couple of teenage hackers
who previously had been working as Alice
in Wonderland characters in a local
shopping mall and they started it in
this garage right here the first Apple
Computer was built here now there are
more than 10 million in use around the
world and I was there well for a short
time I was an employee at Apple Computer
employee number 12 and one day I helped
move materials out of this garage at the
time Steve Jobs said the company was
short of loot so he offered to pay me in
company shares that I held out for the
money my mother still reminds me of that
incident the
Apple one was even less of a computer
than the Altair a single circuit board
that came with neither a case nor a
keyboard still Steve Jobs managed to
sell 50 Apple ones that experience
showed jobs that there was a market for
a real computer the Apple 2
it was very clear to me that while there
were a bunch of hardware hobbyists they
could assemble their own computers or at
least take our board and add the
transformers for the power supply in the
case and the keyboard and go get a you
know etc go get the rest of the stuff
for every one of those there were a
thousand people that couldn't do that
but wanted to mess around with
programming software hobbyists just like
I had been when I was you know 10
discovering that computer and so my
dream for the Apple 2 was to sell the
first real packaged computer
Steve Jobs his dream was impossible it
needed too many chips making the product
too complicated and expensive to build
but woz didn't know it was impossible
and then I got into way of why have
memory for your TV screen and memory for
your computer make them one and that
shrunk the chips down and I shrunk the
chips here and why not take all these
timing circuits I looked through manuals
and found a chip that did it in one chip
instead of five and reduced that and one
thing after another after another
happened I wound up with so few chips
when I was done I said hey the computer
that you could program to generate
colored patterns on a screen or data or
words or play games or anything and we
the computer I wanted you know for
myself pretty much and
but it had turned out so good he said I
think we have a computer we could sell a
thousand a month of how can you sell
thousands a month you know but we needed
some money for tooling the case and
things like that we needed we needed a
few hundred thousand dollars that was a
lot of money for two people who had
nothing in their lives to speak up
didn't have a foreigner dollar bank
account so I went looking for some
venture capital the scruffy 19 year old
seduced the conservative world of
venture capitalists the man jobs
persuaded to part with his cash was
Arthur Rock the inventor of venture
capital and the man who had originally
funded Intel at least the Intel boys had
graduated from University and owned
suits well he wore sandals and he had
long very long hair and beard and
mustache but very articulate
he was I think you at one time in his
life and it was probably when I first
met him that he ain't nothing but fruit
so as a mainline venture capitalist is
this is this is not the norm this is not
with money in hand and under occasional
adult supervision from an X Intel
manager named Mike Markkula woz and jobs
finished the Apple 2 and ordered a local
factory to build 1,000 machines
two years passed between the Altair and
the Apple 2 and in that time a lot of
things changed we went from a computer
that was designed for hobbyists and
engineers and certainly looked like a
piece of test equipment to a computer
that looked like a piece of consumer
electronics and we can thank Steve Jobs
for that his sense of design demanded
that this structural phone case be used
for the Apple 2 the first case of its
type on a personal computer and not that
there wasn't good engineering inside
either the Apple 2 was a model of
efficient engineering here's the floppy
disk drive controller for example there
are eight chips here where previously
there would have been 35 this is an
amazing bit of engineering that we can
attribute to Steve Wozniak who is
certainly the Mozart of digital design
and all told it turned the Apple 2 into
the Apple 2 was launched at Jim Warren's
West Coast computer fair one of the
first big microcomputer shows the 1978
show drew thousands of attendees and
dozens of exhibitors many of the members
of the homebrew Computer Club which
spawned most of the early microcomputer
companies but there was only one company
showing something that looked like a
modern personal computer right by the
entrance in a prime spot negotiated by
Steve Jobs sat the Apple to it
mesmerized Dahl who saw it my
recollection as we stole the show and a
lot of dealers and distributors started
lining up and we were off and running
how old were you
following the West Coast computer fair
the next two years were ones of
explosive growth for Apple with
thousands of customers arriving on the
doorstep of the tiny office in Cupertino California
California
sales and profits grew so quickly that
Apple had more money than the company
could spend and the company was very
young the founders were in their 20s and
some employees were even younger like 14
year old Chris Espinosa who never left
he still works in Apple almost twenty
years later there would be public
demonstrations of our product every
Tuesday and Thursday afternoon at 3
o'clock and that was good because it was
after school so I would get out of my
you know sophomore junior year of high school
school
I would ride my little moped down to the
Apple offices and at three o'clock I'd
given the demonstrations of the Apple to
when we were in the office it was paid
jokes and wiring up people's phones to
do weird things just every one of us I
mean there wasn't there wasn't a person
in Apple I don't think for a couple of
years that was you know super serious we
were lucky we had like the hot product
of its day and some of the people that I
did original demos to came up to me
years later and said you know I found it
a hundred million dollar chain of
computer stores based on the demo you
showed the one Tuesday afternoon at
Apple it's a really fun it went so
successful that all of a sudden Steve
and I wouldn't have to worry about worth
for the rest of our lives and then it
got even more successful and more
successful after that and
it was sort of sort of a shock
the Apple to set a new standard for
personal computers and showed there was
some real money to be made rival
companies popped up all over but the
market was still hobbyists guys with big
beards who thought a good use for their
computer was controlling a model train
sales the actual program but for micro
computers to be taken seriously they had
to start doing things that needed doing
functions that were useful not just for fun
the enthusiast market had its limits to
reach the rest of us the Apple 2 needed
what nerds call a killer application
software that's so useful that people
will buy computers just to run it for
the Apple 2 this application was called
visit CalPERS it came straight from the
blackboards of the Harvard Business School
invented by a graduate student Dan
Bricklin with his programmer friend Bob
Frankston VisiCalc was the first
electronic spreadsheet a
spreadsheet is a tool for financial
planning bringing together for the first
time the seduction of money with the
power of micro computing
dan Brooklands professor at Harvard
showed how companies used a grid of
numbers on a blackboard to work out
profits and expenses 60 down here and
your profit would be this minus this
which gives you 40 and then well let's
see what's the sales growth we'll say
there's a the trick to a spreadsheet is
that all the values in the table are
related to the others and so changes in
one year would ripple through the table
affecting prices and profits in
subsequent years
students were asked to calculate how
future profits would be affected by
various business scenarios it was called
running the numbers and they did it
laborious ly by hand well let's say your
initial costs have 100 fixed cost at the
beginning so now you have a minus 20 is
how much you make the first year and the
second year you have a hundred but your
your variable let's say is is 25 so now
you're you're losing what is it there's
a pain the neck it wasn't pretty good
I'm 80 what no no we failed we just saw
-15 right and then eventually you're
making money what year do we make money
and you know and how much does the cost
of money that's what running the numbers
was because each value was linked to the
others one mistake could mean disaster
blow us all your numbers afterwards
because you make all your calculations
based on other numbers before them if I
had miscalculated Dan who had worked as
a programmer started daydreaming about
how he could use a computer to replace
the tedious hand calculations I imagined
that there was this magic whiteboard
that did like word processing does word
rapping if you make a change to a word
it automatically pulls everything back
well why don't we calculate the same way
so that if I changed my number you know
I should have used 10% instead of 12% I
just put it in and it would recalculate
everything go through it you know and
that would be as it's this idea of
electronic spreadsheet
following a model that's common today
Dan Bricklin designed the program but
got his friend Bob Frankston to write
the actual computer code so it's after
months of programming late at night when
computer time was cheaper the Harvard
Business School blackboards came to life
now we've set this up okay then we type
a new value in okay here I'm going to
take that 100 and I'm going to change it
right and here in recalculate whoa
that's save me so much time people who
saw it and Witten got it but I can
account remember showing up to one
around here and he started shaking it
said that's what I do all week I could
do it in an hour but I could do you know
you know and they would take their
credit cards and shove them in your face
I meet these people now they can look to
me and say I got to tell you you know it
we didn't we did not use the word
spreadsheet but nobody knew a
spreadsheet was I came up with an
invisible calculator or VisiCalc because
you might emphasize that aspect there's
a calc hit the market in October 1979
selling for $100 Marv Goldschmidt sold
the first copies from his computer store
in Bedford Massachusetts after a slow
start VisiCalc took off what it did in
our society it gave people who were
obsessed numbers whether they're in
business or at home how much of my worth
today was my stock portfolio worth how
am i doing he gets budget on this project
project
they gave them ability to play with
scenarios and change it and say well if
I do this
so put people in a sense in control of
the thing that lots of people in our
the spreadsheet was every business man's
crystal ball it answered all those what
if questions what if I fire the
engineering department what if I invest
ten million dollars in pantyhose futures
look I'll be rich in under a year and
have slimmer thighs at the same time the
many fresh out of college drawn here by
[Music]
in five years the PC had gone from a
hobbyist toy to an engine that shaped
the times we lived in thanks to visit
count the Apple 2 made history
everybody you talk to just seemed
excited about talking about what we were
doing and there was this huge media
explosion kind of like the internet is
receiving today of this is the happening
thing you read about it over and over
and over and every time you took an
airplane flight you read about him every
newspaper every week you'd read
something about small computers come in
and Apple was one of the highlight
companies so we were being portrayed as
a leader of a revolution and we really
felt that we were a leader of a
revolution we were gonna change life a lot
lot
pretty good for a company started in a
garage three years before
but not all the PC pioneers made great
fortunes using Dan Bricklin decided not
to patent his spreadsheet idea though
more than 100 million spreadsheets had
been sold since 1979 Bricklin and
Frankston haven't earned VisiCalc
royalties in years you know looking back
at how successful a lot of other people
have been it's kind of sad that we
weren't successful it would be very nice
too because iliyan heirs
thought he can also understand that part
of the reason was that that's not what
we're trying to do work into the 60s and
what do you want to do you wanted to
make the world better and you wanted to
make your mark in the world and improve
things we did it so by the mark of what
we would measure ourselves by we're very
successful yes
and what about Edie Roberts three years
and forty thousand computers after
assembling that first Altair the fun was
over for Edie mitts was just another
player in what had become a competitive
market for personal computers Roberts
sold his company in 1978 and started a
new life he went back to his native
Georgia and retrained as a doctor I
really felt anything all about the last
few years when people sort of taken
credit for things that we did in meds
and that's the only thing I think about
it irritates me the things that we did
in medicine we took all heat for other
people trying to take
that frustrates me
while Eadie Roberts invented the
personal computer it was the founders of
Apple who got rich when Apple went
public in spectacular fashion in 1980
jobs and woz became multimillionaires
the Nerds had inherited the earth I was worth
about over a million dollars when I was
23 and
over 10 million dollars when I was 24
and over a hundred million dollars when
I was 25 and
it wasn't that important because I never
did it for the money
it was just a little hobby company like
a lot of people do not thinking anything
of it I mean it wasn't it wasn't like we
both thought it was going to go a long
ways it was like we both do it for fun
but back then there was a short window
in time where one person who could sit
down and do some neat good designs could
turn them into a huge thing like the
Apple cool [Applause]
[Applause]
it's astonishing that at the beginning
of 1975 nobody owned a personal computer
all there was was a mock-up on a
magazine cover yet within five years
there had emerged here in Silicon Valley
a billion-dollar industry an unhealthy
fascination with technology on the part
of a few adolescents had awakened the
nerd within us all PC companies were
sprouting like mushrooms to meet the
enormous demand Apple had emerged as the
top fungus and had taken 50% of the
market to the boys in Cupertino every
day seemed like Christmas but Scrooge
was around the corner there was a
company that everyone associated with
the word computer a company that
expected no demanded to dominate its
market IBM Big Blue was on the move and
Silicon Valley would soon be feeling the reverberations
[Music] [Applause]
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