hello大家好，我是达达。我们每天在工作时打开电脑使用的微软Excel电子表格等办公软件为我们的日常工作提供了很大帮助，帮助我们解决了很多工作时的困难。你知道这个办公软件背后的故事吗？来听听它的开创人Dan Bricklin博士的讲述吧，或许你会对这类办公软件有新的认识！PS：达达的微博大家关注了么？打开微博搜索并关注用户“TED英语演说优选”（微博头像和公众号一样）。为了方便大家阅读和学习，我已经逐渐把公众号发过的视频搬到微博上了，记得关注咯！ 这样的微软办公软件你喜欢吗？ 来自TED英语演说优选 00:00 12:08 How many of you have used an electronic spreadsheet, like Microsoft Excel? Very good. Now, how many of you have run a business with a spreadsheet by hand, like my dad did for his small printing business in Philadelphia? A lot less.你们中有多少人用过比如Microsoft Excel这样的电子表格呢？非常好。那么，你们中又有多少人曾用手写电子表格经营过小企业，就像我爸爸在费城开设小型印刷业务那样呢？少了很多。Well, that's the way it was done for hundreds of years. In early 1978, I started working on an idea that eventually became VisiCalc. And the next year it shipped running on something new called an Apple II personal computer. You could tell that things had really changed when, six years later, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial that assumed you knew what VisiCalc was and maybe even were using it.不过几百年来各种表格都是用手写的。早在1978年，我就开始设想一个点子，它最终变成了VisiCalc（第一款电子表格办公软件）。第二年，它就开始在一个叫做 Apple II的个人笔记本电脑新产品上运行了。这项发明为世界带来了巨大的改变，就在六年之后，华尔街日报刊登了一篇报道，说你一定知道VisiCalc是什么，你也许正在使用它。Steve Jobs back in 1990 said that 'spreadsheets propelled the industry forward.' 'VisiCalc propelled the success of Apple more than any other single event.' On a more personal note, Steve said, 'If VisiCalc had been written for some other computer, you'd be interviewing somebody else right now.'1990年，史蒂夫・乔布斯曾说：“电子表格推动了产业发展。” “VisiCalc推动了苹果的成功，它的作用胜过了任何其它单一事件。” 在一个更加私人的评论当中，史蒂夫说：“如果VisiCalc是写给其他电脑公司的，你们现在就该在采访其他人了吧。”So, VisiCalc was instrumental in getting personal computers on business desks. How did it come about?What was it? What did I go through to make it be what it was? Well, I first learned to program back in 1966, when I was 15 -- just a couple months after this photo was taken. 所以，把私人电脑搬上商业舞台，VisiCalc发挥了大作用。这一切是怎么发生的？它是什么？我是如何将它变成这样的？我第一次学会编程是在1966年，那是我只有15岁——大概是在拍了这张照片几个月之后。Few high schoolers had access to computers in those days. But through luck and an awful lot of perseverance, I was able to get computer time around the city.在那个年代，很少有高中生就能接触到电脑的。但是有了运气，加上无数坚持不懈的努力，我终于得到了在城市里使用电脑的机会。After sleeping in the mud at Woodstock, I went off to MIT to go to college, where to make money, I worked on the Multics Project. Multics was a trailblazing interactive time-sharing system. Have you heard of the Linux and Unix operating systems? 在伍德斯托克的乡野中过了一阵子之后，我去了麻省理工（MIT）上大学。为了赚钱，我参与了Multics项目。Multics是一个开创性的交互式分时系统。你们听说过Linux 和Unix操作系统吗？They came from Multics. I worked on the Multics versions of what are known as interpreted computer languages, that are used by people in noncomputer fields to do their calculations while seated at a computer terminal.他们的前身就是Multics。我在Multics主要致力于研究那些被非计算机领域的，但是却要坐在电脑终端前进行计算的人们所使用的所谓的解释型计算机语言。After I graduated from MIT, I went to work for Digital Equipment Corporation. At DEC, I worked on softwarefor the new area of computerized typesetting. I helped newspapers replace their reporters' typewriters with computer terminals. 从MIT毕业之后，我去了数字设备公司（DEC）工作。在DEC，我主攻一个用于计算机新领域，文稿排版的软件。我帮助那些报社用电脑终端代替记者们常用的打字机。I'd write software and then I'd go out in the field to places like the Kansas City Star,where I would train users and get feedback. This was real-world experience that is quite different than what I saw in the lab at MIT.我编写软件，并实地考察，去像 《堪萨斯城明星报》这样的地方，这那里，我训练那些用户，并得到反馈。这些实战经历与我在MIT实验室里所体验到的大相径庭。After that, I was project leader of the software for DEC's first word processor, again a new field. Like with typesetting, the important thing was crafting a user interface that was both natural and efficient for noncomputer people to use. 在那之后，我就成为了DEC第一个文字处理器软件的项目主管，又是一个新领域。和文稿排版软件一样，最重要的是做出一个对于非计算机领域人士既自然，又高效的用户页面。After I was at DEC, I went to work for a small company that made microprocessor-based electronic cash registers for the fast-food industry. But I had always wanted to start a company with my friend Bob Frankston that I met on the Multics project at MIT.在DEC之后，我又去了一家小公司工作，他们做的是快餐领域中基于微处理器的电子收银机。但是我一直以来都想和我在MIT，Multics项目中认识的好友鲍勃·弗兰克斯顿一起开一家公司。So I decided to go back to school to learn as much as I could about business. And in the fall of 1977, I entered the MBA program at Harvard Business School. I was one of the few percentage of students who had a background in computer programming. There's a picture of me from the yearbook sitting in the front row.所以，我决定回到学校，尽我所能的学习一下商业经营。之后，在1977年的秋天，我加入了哈佛商学院的MBA项目。我就是那一小部分有计算机编程背景的学生之一。这是年鉴中我的照片，我坐在前排。Now, at Harvard, we learned by the case method. We'd do about three cases a day. Cases consist of up to a few dozen pages describing particular business situations. They often have exhibits, and exhibits often have words and numbers laid out in ways that make sense for the particular situation. 在哈佛，我们是以案例分析的方式学习的。我们每天大约做三个案例分析。每个案例都是由好几十页纸组成的，描述了某个具体的企业经营情况。它们通常会有演释，这些演释中 经常会有一些字母和数字，而它们的排列只在特定的情况下才有意义。They're usually all somewhat different. Here's my homework. Again, numbers, words, laid out in ways that made sense. Lots of calculations -- we got really close to our calculators. In fact, here's my calculator. For Halloween, I went dressed up as a calculator.它们通常都是完全不同的。这是我的作业。又是数字、字母，以一种有意义的方式排列。计算量非常大——我们的效率都快接近计算器了。事实上，这是我当时用的计算器。在万圣节，我还穿成了计算器的模样。At the beginning of each class, the professor would call on somebody to present the case. What they would do is they would explain what was going on and then dictate information that the professor would transcribeonto the many motorized blackboards in the front of the class, and then we'd have a discussion. 在每节课的开始，教授都会叫一个人去汇报案例。他们通常会介绍一下案例，然后口述一下信息，教授就会把信息转录到教室最前方的电动黑板上，然后我们会就此展开讨论。One of the really frustrating things is when you've done all your homework, you come in the next day only to find out that you made an error and all of the other numbers you did were wrong. And you couldn't participate as well. And we were marked by class participation.最令人沮丧的事情之一就是当你做完了所有的作业，然而第二天早上一来，发现出了一个小错误，然后其它的数据就跟着都算错了。这样你就没法参与课堂讨论了。可是我们是根据课堂参与度打分的。So, sitting there with 87 other people in the class, I got to daydream a lot. Most programmers in those days worked on mainframes, building things like inventory systems, payroll systems and bill-paying systems. But I had worked on interactive word processing and on-demand personal computation. 所以，跟着其它87个人同坐在一个教室里，我经常开小差。那个年代，大多数的程序员都是主攻中央处理器的，建造一些像是库存系统，工资系统或是账单处理系统之类的。但是我曾在互动语言处理和按需个人计算领域工作过。Instead of thinking about paper printouts and punch cards, I imagined a magic blackboard that if you erased one number and wrote a new thing in, all of the other numbers would automatically change, like word processing with numbers. I imagined that my calculator had mouse hardware on the bottom of it and a head-up display, like in a fighter plane. 我没有考虑打印纸或是穿孔纸，而是想象出了一个神奇的黑板，只要擦掉一个数字，然后再写一个新的进去，所有其它的数据都会跟着自动改变，就像是数字领域的文字处理过程。我想象我的计算器能在底部有鼠标和硬件，上方还有个显示屏，就像是一架战斗机。And I could type some numbers in, and circle it, and press the sum button. And right in the middle of a negotiation I'd be able to get the answer. Now I just had to take my fantasy and turn it into reality.这样，我就可以输一些数字进去，然后圈中它，按下求和键。这样，在谈判桌上我们就能够得到结果了。现在，我只需要把我的理想变为现实了。My father taught me about prototyping. He showed me mock-ups that he'd make to figure out the placement on the page for the things for brochures that he was printing. And he'd use it to get feedback from customersand OKs before he sent the job off to the presses. The act of making a simple, working version of what you're trying to build forces you to uncover key problems. And it lets you find solutions to those problems much less expensively.我父亲教会了我如何设计原型。他给我展示了那种为了找到小册子上正确印刷位置而制作的模型。他使用这些模型去收集来自用户的反馈，当得到好的回复时，他就把他的作品送到印刷厂。试图去建立一种简单的，可用的版本的行为迫使你去揭露那些关键问题。而且这也使你能够更加低成本的解决那些问题。So I decided to build a prototype. I went to a video terminal connected to Harvard's time-sharing system and got to work. One of the first problems that I ran into was: How do you represent values in formulas? Let me show you what I mean. 所以我决定去建造一台原型机。我前往了一个连接在哈佛分时系统里的视频终端并开始了工作。我遇到的最基本的一个问题就是：如何表达算式中的数值呢？我来解释一下。I thought that you would point somewhere, type in some words, then type in some somewhere else, put in some numbers and some more numbers, point where you want the answer. And then point to the first, press minus, point to the second, and get the result. 我想象你会指向某个方向，输入某个单词，然后在另一个位置，放进一些数字，更多的数字， 指一下你想要得到结果的地方。指向第一个数字，放上减号，再指向第二个数字，然后得到结果。The problem was: What should I put in the formula? It had to be something the computer knew what to put in. And if you looked at the formula, you needed to know where on the screen it referred to. 问题在于：我应该把什么放进公式里呢？这就需要电脑去知道该把什么东西放进去而当你看见公式的时候，你就需要知道在屏幕上它所代表的位置含义。The first thing I thought was the programmer way of doing it. The first time you pointed to somewhere, the computer would ask you to type in a unique name. It became pretty clear pretty fast that that was going to be too tedious. 我最初想到的是以一种程序员的方式去做这件事。当第一次你指向一个位置的时候，电脑会要求你输入一个特殊的名称。而很快事情就变得清晰起来了，这个过程太单调乏味了。The computer had to automatically make up the name and put it inside. So I thought, why not make it be the order in which you create them? I tried that. Value 1, value 2. Pretty quickly I saw that if you had more than a few values you'd never remember on the screen where things were.电脑要能够自动的编译名称并把它放进所指定的位置。所以我就想，为什么不让他们以一种你们创造他们的顺序排列？我尝试了。数值1，数值2。然后，很快我就意识到了，如果你的数字很多，要想记住它们在屏幕上的位置是根本不可能的。Then I said, why not instead of allowing you to put values anywhere, I'll restrict you to a grid? Then when you pointed to a cell, the computer could put the row and column in as a name. And, if I did it like a map and put ABC across the top and numbers along the side, if you saw B7 in a formula, you'd know exactly where it was on the screen. 然后我就说，为什么不让你们随便把数值放在哪里，然后我来用一个表格进行限制？然后当你指向一个单元格，电脑就会自动生成携带名字的行与列。然后，如果我把它做的和地图一样，在顶上横向生成ABC，侧面纵向生成数字，那么当你在公式中看到B7时，你就会准确的知道它在屏幕中的位置了。And if you had to type the formula in yourself, you'd know what to do. Restricting you to a grid helped solve my problem. It also opened up new capabilities, like the ability to have ranges of cells. But it wasn't too restrictive -- you could still put any value, any formula, in any cell. And that's the way we do it to this day, almost 40 years later.如果你必须要手动输入公式的时候，你也会知道该怎么做。把这些都限制在表格当中 解决了我的问题。这也开启了一些新的功能，比如设定单元格的操作范围。但是它并非很死板——你仍旧可以把任何值，任何公式放进任意的单元格当中。这就是我们一直到今天都在做的，将近40年之后。My friend Bob and I decided that we were going to build this product together. I did more work figuring out exactly how the program was supposed to behave. I wrote a reference card to act as documentation. It also helped me ensure that the user interface I was defining could be explained concisely and clearly to regular people. 我的朋友鲍勃和我决定 要一起制作这个产品。我花了更多的时间去研究这个程序究竟该如何运作。我还写了一篇参考文档，用作记录。这也帮助了我确保我所定义的用户界面可以向普通人简洁，清晰地阐述。Bob worked in the attic of the apartment he rented in Arlington, Massachusetts. This is the inside of the attic. Bob bought time on the MIT Multics System to write computer code on a terminal like this. And then he would download test versions to a borrowed Apple II over a phone line using an acoustic coupler,and then we would test.鲍勃是在马萨诸塞州阿灵顿市租的公寓小阁楼上工作的。这就是小阁楼的内部。鲍勃购买了MIT，Multics的分时系统，用于在像这样的终端上书写代码。然后他就会使用声音耦合器，通过电话线将测试版本下载到借来的Apple II电脑上，然后我们就会测试它。For one of these tests I prepared for this case about the Pepsi Challenge. Print wasn't working yet, so I had to copy everything down. Save wasn't working, so every time it crashed, I had to type in all of the formulas again, over and over again. 我准备的测试之一就是百事挑战。那时还没法打印，所以我只能将所有东西抄录下来。当时也没有保存功能，所以每次程序崩溃时，我都必须将所有的公式都一遍又一遍地重输进去。The next day in class, I raised my hand; I got called on, and I presented the case.I did five-year projections. I did all sorts of different scenarios. I aced the case. VisiCalc was already useful.第二天在课堂上，我举起了我的手；我被叫到了台上展示案例。我做了一个五年的预测。我做了各种各样的情景预期。我成功的做出了这个案例，VisCalc已经很有用了。The professor said, 'How did you do it?' Well, I didn't want to tell him about our secret program.教授就问，“你是怎么做出来的？” 不过，我不想告诉他我们的秘密项目。So I said, 'I took this and added this and multiplied by this and subtracted that.'
所以我就说，“我选取这个，加上这个，然后乘以这个，然后再减去那个。”
He said, 'Well, why didn't you use a ratio?'I said, 'Hah! A ratio -- that wouldn't have been as exact!' What I didn't say was, 'Divide isn't working yet.'我说，“哈！因为用比率就没有那么准确了！” 但我没有说的是：“除法暂时还不好用。”
Eventually, though, we did finish enough of VisiCalc to be able to show it to the public. My dad printed up a sample reference card that we could use as marketing material.最后，总而言之，我们确实把VisCalc做的足够完整了，可以把它向大众展示了。我父亲就把参考文档的小样打印了出来。我们就把它当作我们的宣传材料。In June of 1979, our publisher announced VisiCalc to the world, in a small booth at the giant National Computer Conference in New York City. The New York Times had a humorous article about the conference.'The machines perform what seem religious rites ... 在1979年的六月，我们的出版商在纽约大型计算机会议上的一个小摊位上，把VisCalc介绍给了全世界。纽约时代周刊为这次的会议写了一篇趣评。“机器正在表演看似宗教仪式的东西…… Even as the believers gather, the painters in the Coliseum sign room are adding to the pantheon, carefully lettering 'VISICALC' in giant black on yellow. All hail VISICALC!' (Gasp) New York Times: 'All hail VISICALC.'信徒们不断聚集而来，画家们不断聚集到大型场所，加入圣殿，仔细地在巨大的黄板上写下巨大黑色的‘VISCALC’字样。所有人都在为VISCALC喝彩！” 那可是纽约时报啊：“所有人都在喝彩，VISCALC！”That was the last mention of the electronic spreadsheet in the popular business press for about two years.Most people didn't get it yet. But some did.这也是最后一次一个电子表格能在流行商业新闻中红两年。大多数人还不是很理解。但是有些人理解了。In October of 1979, we shipped VisiCalc. It came in packaging that looked like this. And it looked like this running on the Apple II. And the rest, as they say, is history.在1979年10月，我们发售了VisCalc。它的包装刚到的时候是这样的。当它在Apple II上运行的时候是这样的。剩下的，按照他们的说法，就是历史了。Now, there's an awful lot more to this story, but that'll have to wait for another day. One thing, though, Harvard remembers. Here's that classroom. They put up a plaque to commemorate what happened there.现在，这个故事还有好大一截子呢，但是我只能留到过两天再说了。尽管如此，但是有一点，哈佛还记得这事。这就是当时的教室。他们居然竖了块儿牌子来纪念当时这儿发生的事。But it also serves as a reminder that you, too, should take your unique backgrounds, skills and needs and build prototypes to discover and work out the key problems, and through that, change the world.但这也是一个提醒，那就是，你们一样，也能够运用你们的特殊背景、技能和需求去设计原型，并发现，解决那些关键问题，然后通过这一切，改变这个世界。
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