Editing Dan Bricklin (section)

==Early life and education==
Bricklin was born 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 [[List of MIT dormitories#Bexley Hall|Bexley Hall]].<ref name="TS">[http://www.techstars.org/mentors/dbricklin/ Dan Bricklin Co-creator of VisiCalc, and Founder of Software Garden, Inc.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101231035123/http://www.techstars.org/mentors/dbricklin/ |date=2010-12-31 }}. [[TechStars]]. Accessed Jan 3 2011.</ref><ref name="EI" />

Upon graduating from MIT, Bricklin worked for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) where he was part of the team that worked on [[WPS-8]]<ref name="Spira2011">{{Cite book |last=Jonathan B. Spira |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eC016EMcTmoC&q=%22WPS-8%22%20%20%22DEC%22&pg=PA53 |title=Overload!: How Too Much Information is Hazardous to Your Organization |date=18 April 2011 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-118-06417-7 |page=53 |quote=...I spoke with Dan Bricklin, the co-inventor of [[VisiCalc]], who was on the team at DEC that developed WPS-8 in the mid-1970s...}}</ref> 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.<ref name="EI" />

While a student at Harvard Business School, Bricklin co-developed VisiCalc in 1979, making it the first electronic spreadsheet readily available for home and office use. 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 could turn 20 hours of work into 15 minutes and allowed for more creativity.<ref name="EI" /><ref name="Inventors">[https://archive.today/20120527034402/http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa010199.htm The First Spreadsheet - VisiCalc]. About.com: Inventors. Accessed January 3, 2011.</ref>