Those of us who toil in the cube farms of America are well versed in the use of spreadsheets and word processors, now pretty much exclusively Word and Excel. It's hard to imagine doing work by hand anymore. This was not always the case, of course. Our work lives changed in June 1979 with the announcement of the first commercial spreadsheet, VisiCalc, and the release of the first commercial word processing software, Wordstar.
Visicalc, which would be released on the Apple II later in 1979, was the work of Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston in the winter of '78-'79. The next year, they founded Software Arts to manufacture the software, to be distributed exclusively for the Apple II, elevating the Apple from a hobbyists' toy, to a business tool. It was also was one of the softwares bundled into the IBM PC in 1981.
WordStar was developed by MicroPro International, led by its owner, Seymour Rubenstein and their chief developer, Rob Barnaby. Originally devloped for the CP/M operating system, it was released in June 1979. It was reconfigured for DOS computers and by 1983, it was the leading commercial product in word processing. Curiously, it became the processor of choice for William Buckley, who used the product for the rest of his career, even years after other, more user friendly options appeared.
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