Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 19:19:56 -0400 
From: Mitchell Kapor        
To: Daniel Power   
Subject: Re: spreadsheets  

Thanks for sharing your paper.

A few comments: 
   
I am not familiar with Mattessich's work.  Thanks for pointing it out.
I've always felt what gave Visicalc its unique power and novelty was the
way it married a user interface to the data model.  I find it plausible
that a data model consisting of a matrix of cells with formulas in them was
not new to Visicalc.  However, the use of a direct interaction metaphor,
which was enabled by the personal computer, was certainly new.  The
marriage of the two created the killer app.    
    
Corrections: 
        
Visicalc also used the "A1" referencing method.  It was Microsoft Multiplan
which used the inferior R1C1 notation.                      

I worked at Personal Software in 1980, not 1981.

I didn't exactly offer to sell Personal Software the rights to 1-2-3.
After getting royalties on VisiPlot/VisiTrend, I approached them to buy me
out of my contract.  As a condition of sale, PSI wanted a non-compete.
That is, they wanted me to agree, for a period of time, not to create any
products which had a competitive overlap with the ones I was selling them
the rights to.  Since the plan for the new product (not yet named 1-2-3)   
had graphing integrated with the spreadsheet, I faced a problem how to
proceed.  What I did was disclose the spec for the product to them and ask
for an exemption from the non-competition agreement for that product.  I am
not sure why they agreed to this.  Perhaps they felt I lacked credibility
to pull off something this ambitious.  If so, they underestimated me.


At 12:59 PM 4/12/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Hello-  
>
>I was reviewing your bio on the web and thought perhaps you'd review my
>paper "A Brief History of Spreadsheets" at URL dss.cba.uni.edu.  Any   
>comments, reflections, corrections, suggestions would be much        
>appreciated. 
>        
>Daniel Power