In the 1970's Dan Bricklin watched a professor at Harvard Business School create a financial model on a blackboard. When the professor made an error he had to erase and re-write a series of sequential numbers. Bricklin noticed this and thought that it could be automated via a computer.
The idea was refined by Bob Frankston and together they developed a product for their company Software Arts called VisiCalc, the world's first spreadsheet. In 1979 they released it for the Apple II and the Apple transformed from hobbyist's toy to a useful financial tool for business. The enormous success of VisiCalc spawned imitators and soon VisiCalc lost favor as newer applications worked better. At the time there had never been a patent for an application so the VisiCalc team never received royalties from the successes of the VisiCalc's clones.
Perhaps the greatest impact of VisiCalc was the high probability that it was the motivating factor that moved IBM into the personal computer market. With IBM's entry came Microsoft's success and the dominant computer platform still in operation today.
All because a Professor at Harvard made a mistake.
-Professor Walter
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