Dan Bricklin

Daniel Singer Bricklin (born July 16, 1951) is an American businessman and engineer who is the co-creator, with Bob Frankston, of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program. He also founded Software Garden, Inc., of which he is currently president, and Trellix, which he left in 2004. He currently serves as the chief technology officer of Alpha Software.

His book, Bricklin on Technology, was published by Wiley in May 2009. For his work with VisiCalc, Bricklin is often referred to as "the father of the Spreadsheet". He was one of six people spotlighted when the Computer was denoted "Machine of the Year" by Time magazine in 1982.

Early life and education Bricklin was born in a Jewish family in Philadelphia, where he attended Akiba Hebrew Academy. He began his college as a mathematics major, but soon switched to computer science. He earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973, where he was a resident of Bexley Hall. until 1976, when he began working for FasFax, a cash register manufacturer. In 1977, he returned to education, and was awarded a Master of Business Administration from Harvard University in 1979.

Career

Software Arts

In 1979, Bricklin and Frankston founded Software Arts, Inc., and began selling VisiCalc, via a separate company named VisiCorp. Along with Frankston, Bricklin started writing versions of the program for the Tandy TRS-80, Commodore PET and the Atari 800. Soon after its launch, VisiCalc became a fast seller at $100. and Spotlight, a desktop organizer for the IBM Personal Computer."

Bricklin was awarded the Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1981 for VisiCalc. Bricklin could not patent VisiCalc, since software inventions were not eligible for patent protection at the time.

Bricklin was chairman of Software Arts until 1985, the year that Software Arts was acquired by Lotus. Slate corporation, and developed At Hand, a pen-based spreadsheet. was released in November 1994.

Corporation In 1995 Bricklin founded Trellix Corporation, named for Trellix Site Builder.

Trellix was bought by Interland (now Web.com) in 2003, and Bricklin became Interland's chief technology officer until early 2004.

In 2003, Bricklin was given the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award for being a technology change leader. He was recognized for having used information technology in an industry-transforming way. He has received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Newbury College. He also became a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

In 2004, he was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for advancing the utility of personal computers by developing the VisiCalc electronic spreadsheet."

Bricklin: appeared in the 1996 documentary Triumph of the Nerds, as well as the 2005 documentary Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks, in both cases discussing the development of VisiCalc. introduced the term "friend-to-friend networking" on August 11, 2000. also introduced the term cornucopia of the commons about the same time.