Sep 5, 2016
Bob Frankston, co-developer of Visicalc
Bob Frankston was co-developer of Visicalc, with Dan Bricklin, and co-founder of Software Arts, the company that first published Visicalc. Bob was also involved with the Atari 800 port of the program.
If you're like to see our talking heads, a video version of this interview is available at the Internet Archive and YouTube, at the links below.
This interview took place on August 22, 2016.
"So we were really lucky there. But the important thing is to appreciate the luck factor ... A lot of people, especially in the .com boom days and everything, thought they were geniuses because the first thing they did worked. Well, no. They were lucky."
Video of this interview at YouTube: https://youtu.be/X2ksQXoump4
Bob and Dan wrote about the history of Visicalc for Creative Computing magazine: http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v10n11/122_Visicalc79.php
Bob's web site: http://bob.ma/public/?name=ImplementingVisiCalc
Inverse ATASCII podcast on VisiCalc: https://inverseatascii.info/2015/01/13/s1e8-visicalc/
Wikipedia on VisiCalc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc
Wikipedia on Bob Frankston: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Frankston