Database managers often tested the limits of 1980s personal computers. For example, longtime Computer Chronicles contributor George Morrow faced an ongoing problem with the database he maintained to catalog his massive collection of 78 records. He told the final issue of the Morrow Owners’ Review that he’d been forced to abandon his own Morrow Designs MD11 because the old CP/M machine could no longer hold the database.

Morrow initially used a database manager called Personal Pearl, but after about 9,000 records or so, it “got severe hiccups.” So he moved to Ashton-Tate’s dbase II. But after he reached record 32,678 on that program, it “wrapped around on itself and destroyed records.” (This would be the dBASE equivalent of the Pac-Man level 256 kill screen.) Thankfully, Morrow managed to move the database to an MS-DOS machine and repair his data thanks to Norton Utilities, something he discussed in a previous Chronicles episode.

George Morrow was a regular contributor to the early seasons of Computer Chronicles, providing commentary on industry trends and filling in for Gary Kildall as co-host. He was also the chairman of Morrow Designs, a manufacturer of microcomputers founded in the period before the IBM PC took the market by storm. But the company's 10-year run came to an arbupt end in early 1986 after losing out on a key government contract to provide portable computers to the IRS.

On May 2, 1985, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs held a joint press conference at Tavern on the Green, the famous restaurant in New York City’s Central Park. The co-founders of Microsoft and Apple, respectively, announced the forthcoming release of Excel, Microsoft’s newest spreadsheet program for Apple’s Macintosh. This wasn’t Microsoft’s first spreadsheet. Three years earlier, in 1982, Microsoft released Multiplan. But it had failed to gain market share against the dominant Lotus 1-2-3. So Gates decided to cede the traditional spreadsheet market to Lotus and refocus Microsoft’s efforts on the Macintosh’s graphical user interface.

In 1987, three small software companies appeared on "Computer Chronicles" to demonstrate their income tax preparation programs. One of those programs, TurboTax, continues to dominate the market today. But while TurboTax now belongs to Intuit Corporation, back in 1987 it was still owned by a literal "mom and pop" company called ChipSoft. How did Intuit end up taking over TurboTax? And what happened to the other two products?

• Computer Chronicles Revisited, Part 80 — The Tax Advantage, MacInTax, TurboTax, and PC/Tax Cut
• Computer Chronicles #421 — Tax Preparation Software
• In$ide Intuit (Suzanne E. Taylor and Kathy Schroeder, 2003)
• Oral History of Scott Cook (Computer History Museum, 2019)
• Oral History of Scott Proulx (Computer History Museum, 2019)
• Podcast Music: "Scenic Detour" by Melody Ayres-Griffiths

Download this podcast (MP3)

In 1978, Harvard Business School student Dan Bricklin started thinking about creating an electronic spreadsheet program. That summer, Bricklin decided to try and make his idea a reality. He developed a prototype on an Apple II that he borrowed from Dan Fylstra, who had received his own Harvard MBA the year before and founded a company called Personal Software.

After completing the prototype and showing it to Fylstra, Personal Software agreed to publish the program. Bricklin and a fellow programmer, Bob Frankston, formed their own company, Software Arts, to serve as the developer. Personal Software would then handle marketing and sales and pay royalties to Software Arts.

The history of computer word processing applications can be divided into three main periods, each tied to a specific platform transition. In the first period–the late 1970s and early 1980s when CP/M machines dominated the microcomputer market–WordStar was the gold standard. After the IBM PC came along and MS-DOS displaced CP/M, WordPerfect similarly overtook WordStar. Then, as Windows was finally accepted by the masses at the start of the 1990s, Microsoft’s Word usurped WordPerfect as the one word processor to rule them all. (And if we extend things to the present, in the post-PC age there is effectively a commercial word processing duopoly with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.)

PageMaker was the program that defined desktop publishing for the Macintosh platform back in 1985. But what about the PC? Three ex-Digital Research employees believed that desktop publishing could reach the masses of IBM and compatible users as well, so they started Ventura Software. Today, their product "Ventura Publisher" is a largely forgotten footnote in desktop publishing history.

• Computer Chronicles Revisited, Part 69 -- PageMaker, Ventura Publisher, and the DEST PC Scan Plus
• Computer Chronicles #408 -- Desktop Publishing, Part 2 (1986)
• Oral history with Paul Brainerd (Computer History Museum, 2006)
• Oral history panel with Paul Brainerd, Jonathan Seybold, Lee Lorenzen, and John Scull (Computer History Museum, 2017)
• Michael J. Miller's review of Ventura Publisher (InfoWorld, 1986)
• Ted Silveira's review of Ventura Publisher (PROFILES Magazine, 1987)
• Podcast Music: "Scenic Detour" by Melody Ayres-Griffiths

Download this podcast (MP3)

In the studio introduction for a March 1987 Computer Chronicles episode on computers and gambling, Stewart Cheifet showed Gary Kildall a hand-held, calculator-like device that claimed to help people pick winning race horses. Although Cheifet never identified the device by name, it was the Mattel Horse Race Analyzer, an odd footnote in the history of Mattel Electronics, which itself was a short-lived subsidiary of the famed Los Angeles-based toy company.

On April 28, 1988, Mark Herbst of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, went to the offices of the Pennsylvania Lottery to redeem the winning “Super 7” ticket from a July 1987 drawing. Under lottery rules, the winner had one year to claim their prize. Herbst, a clerk at a video rental store, told the press that he had “found the winning stub in an old cigar box.” He said he played the lottery so frequently that he often forgot to actually check his tickets. It was only a news report a few days earlier about unclaimed lottery prizes that prompted him to see if he might have a winning ticket.

Dr. Edward Fry, then a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said in a 1987 report that young school children should be taught keyboard typing as opposed to cursive writing. This was a fairly radical notion for 1987 as computers were not yet commonplace in the home. And there was a feeling among many educators at the time that learning to write cursive was an essential step in promoting literacy itself.