The Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires

00:05:00 who hear the calling. Most other kids are watching TV

00:06:53 Their hobby is their business

00:09:15 as opposed to things that can't be understood at all, like the motivations of young women, say

00:10:43 She invented a computer language, English words that the computer itself could translate into binary code.

00:12:22 and it would tell you something out

00:14:34 not necessarily the ones on top.

00:16:50 Out in the desert near the airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Ed Roberts ran a calculator company called MITS.

00:18:49 Pretty historic junk but the question is what do you do with it?

00:20:58 'And' required another nine switches. The answer 4 was if the third light from the left turned on. Eureka!

00:22:58 Here comes the guy who solved the problem. Twenty years after finishing the first microcomputer BASIC

00:24:57 It had never been run on an actual computer before.

00:26:54 because the music would be banging off the walls, mostly acid rock.

00:29:33 It's the same thing that causes people to want to be poets instead of bankers.

00:31:16 And it's my contention that that is a major component of why Silicon Valley was able to

00:32:54 The first Apple computer was built here, now there are more than ten million in use around the world.

00:34:44 hey, a computer that you could program to generate coloured patterns on a screen

00:36:41 demanded that this structural foam case be used for the Apple 2 the first case of its type on a personal computer.

00:38:39 and that was good because it was after school.

00:40:35 A spreadsheet is a tool for financial planning

00:42:31 - and that would be this idea of an electronic spread sheet.

00:44:10 of the thing that lots of people in our society feel is driving them and that's numbers.

00:46:26 Bricklin and Frankston haven't earned VisiCalc royalties in years.

00:48:12 and ehm it wasn't that important ehm because I never did it for the money.

65:00:00 just to stay afloat.