Sep 13, 2020
Kai and George Esbensen, Micro-Ed Software
I first heard about the Micro-Ed software company when a member of
the Atari community sent me a batch of educational cassette tapes
to digitize. The tapes had titles like Maps and Globes,
Punctuation, and Spelling Level E. Intriguingly, the tape labels
said "Micro-Ed, creators of more than 2,500 programs, pre-school
through adult." 2,500 programs? Why had I never heard of this
company?
I asked 4AM, a software
preservationist specializing in the Apple II — and specializing in
little-known educational software — if they had heard of the
company. The answer was also no. So I started to research.
A two-page advertisement in Compute! magazine issue 4, May 1980,
provided my first glimpse into the company: "LOOK at all the
MICRO-ED programs for the PET!" The titles listed include Agreement
of Subject and Verb; Run on Sentences; Higher, Same, Lower; Word
Demons; and (oddly) Usage Boners. Many of the software tapes were
sold in packs, for instance $84 for a pack of 12 elementary school
programs. $49.95 for a grade's worth of spelling lessons on 7
tapes.
An item in the Washington Apple Pi journal, four years later,
January 1984, intrigued me: "$10,000 EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE GIVEAWAY.
Micro-Ed Incorporated has announced its willingness to donate up to
$10,000 worth of software to any school district, Special Education
cooperative, or parent group willing to establish a school-to-home
lending library. No limit has been established on the number of
grants Micro-Ed will make. The donation is not contingent upon the
purchase of any Micro-Ed products. ... Thorward Esbensen,
Micro-Ed's president, 'envisions the establishment of a free
lending library of educational software for families.'"
Less than a year later, in November 1984, the Commodore magazine
The Transactor (v5n3) wrote that Micro-Ed had donated "more than a
half million dollars worth of its instructional programs to school
systems" for those free software lending libraries.
So. Micro-Ed was established in 1979 by Thorward (Tory) Esbensen.
Based in Eden Prairie, MN, the company specialized in low-cost
educational software. The software, written in the BASIC
programming language, was available for Commodore PET, VIC-20, and
Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, Apple II, TRS-80, and Texas Instruments
computers. Micro-Ed's best-known title was perhaps "Trail West," an
Oregon Trail-like game.
Mr. Esbensen died in 2012. I interviewed two of his sons, both of
whom worked with their father at Micro-Ed. First, I talked with Kai
Esbensen, the youngest in the family. Kai told me in email: "My
siblings had all moved out by the time Micro-Ed was in motion, but
I lived it. Helping out with Micro-Ed was my first paid job, in
2nd/3rd grade, and I was still on the payroll helping out through
age 22." This interview took place on May 28, 2020. ...
Next, I talked with Kai's older brother, George Esbensen, who was a
salesman for Micro-Ed, and later was president of Cycle Software
Services, a software duplication company that spun off from
Micro-Ed. This interview took place on June 3, 2020.
Very old
Micro-Ed/Thorwald Esbensen web site
AtariMania's partial list of Micro-Ed Software for Atari
Micro-Ed advertisement in Compute! magazine May 1980
Thorwald Esbensen obituary in StarTribune
Thorwald Esbensen obituary in Duluth News Tribune
Washington Apple Pi, January 1984
The
Transactor v5n3