Dan Bricklin - Early Life

Early Life

Bricklin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, where he attended Akiba Hebrew Academy during his high school years. 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. He began his college career as a mathematics major, but soon switched to computer science.

Upon graduating from MIT, Bricklin worked for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) until 1976, when he began working for FasFax, a cash register manufacturer. In 1977, he decided to return to school, and he earned a Master of Business Administration from Harvard University in 1979.

While a student at Harvard Business School, Bricklin co-developed VisiCalc in 1979, making it the first electronic spreadsheet. It ran on an Apple II computer, and was considered a fourth generation software program. VisiCalc is widely credited for fueling the rapid growth of the personal computer industry. Instead of doing financial projections with manually calculated spreadsheets, and having to recalculate with every single cell in the sheet, VisiCalc allowed the user to change any cell, and have the entire sheet automatically recalculated. This turned 20 hours of work into 15 minutes and allowed for more creativity.

Prior to forming Software Arts, Bricklin had been a market researcher for Prime Computer Inc., a senior systems programmer for FasFax Corporation, and a senior software engineer for Digital Equipment Corporation.