January 30, 1979, Boston, USA.

Boston is located on the Atlantic coast of the northeastern United States, close to New York. It is the capital of Massachusetts and one of the oldest and most culturally valuable cities in the United States.

In the early morning, Chen Chong woke up and raised his hand to look at the time. It was just past 6:30, and the good living habits he had maintained after traveling through time made his biological clock very stable and he woke up at about this time every day.

After turning over and getting out of bed, opening the curtains, Chen Chong saw his uncle Zhao Anping standing on the snow in the yard and practicing Tai Chi.

After watching for a while, I couldn't see any name. I just felt that Zhao Anping's movements were steady and smooth, stretched and coherent, like flowing clouds and water, continuous. Although the rhythm was as slow as those old men and women in the park, it was very rhythmic and had an indescribable beauty.

"Maybe he has real skills."

Chen Chong looked at Zhao Anping's round and free-spirited figure and remembered the records in his father's diary.

Zhao Anping's experience is quite legendary. He practiced martial arts with his grandfather for several years in his early years. After his grandfather passed away, no one disciplined him. At that time, the social security in Hong Kong was in chaos. He was thug on the streets and worked as a thug in the underworld for several years. He did not do anything big or small, and often made all over his body bruises. Shen Chong's parents had a headache about this, but they had no choice but to beat and scold him, but they did their own thing afterwards and were very rebellious.

One day, Zhao Anping went to collect the bills and returned home late. On the way, he saw a group of people teasing a girl. Although he often fought, he never bullied women and didn't like him. So he rushed over and beat the gangsters away with three punches and two kicks, which changed his life.

The person who was rescued was an American girl who fell in love with him at first sight. The foreign girl was enthusiastic and unrestrained and pursued him passionately. The woman pursued the man and the veil was separated. Not long after, Zhao Anping fell in love and then followed the girl to the United States and lived in Boston for more than 20 years.

Now he has opened a Chinese restaurant in Boston Chinatown, and his life is quite comfortable.

After a set of Tai Chi punches, Chen Chong saw fog coming out of Zhao Anping's head, indicating that the amount of exercise just now was quite large.

After washing up, Chen Chong opened the door and went downstairs. Zhao Anping's house was a typical American villa with two floors, a wooden structure, and a large space.

"A Chong, I got up so early." Zhao Anping stood at the dining table reading the newspaper. When he saw Chen Chong, he put down the newspaper and said, "Why don't you sleep for a while?"

"I can't sleep, I'm used to getting up at this time."

"Get to bed early and get up early, this is a good habit, so you must keep it." Zhao Anping told me that he did not see the style of a gold medal thug decades ago. "You can read the newspaper, and I will make breakfast."

Chen Chong took the newspaper and saw it. It was the Boston Globe, a world-class newspaper. The front page was a huge photo of Mr. Deng in front of the White House.

On January 28, 1979, the Lunar New Year, Mr. Deng set out from Beijing in the morning and arrived in Washington in the afternoon of American time. The next day, President Carter held a grand welcoming ceremony at the White House.

This is the most concerned news in the world in recent times, and Chen Chong is no exception. Moreover, he knows better than ordinary people about the importance of Deng Gong’s visit to the United States. If you want to select major events that will affect the direction of world development in the next 30 years, this event will definitely be ranked first.

The so-called big words are invisible, the more serious the event is, the less ordinary people can get benefits from it immediately. Chen Chong is in such an embarrassing state at present. If he is a senior Chinese official, he can get enough political resources for his whole life. If he is an American rich man, he can get a lot of economic benefits from it. Unfortunately, he is nothing...

I can only play soy sauce and watch the fun.

While reading the newspaper, I chatted with Zhao Anping. After a while, my aunt Jane also got up.

Zhao Anping and his wife have a daughter. In the same year as Shen Chong, she gathered in famous Boston schools, but she went to UCLA on the West Coast to go to school. The holidays in the United States are usually the week before Christmas, and school starts in late January. She has something to do at school, which delays her trip and has not been able to come back during the Spring Festival.

My aunt's family went to New York for sightseeing yesterday, but Chen Chong refused to go. My aunt's two cousins ​​were at the age of eleven or twelve years old when they were tired of dogs. They were too noisy, and my uncle's political view was in conflict with him...

"Today, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Chinatown is going to hold a New Year's dinner in the store, and I can't leave." During breakfast, Zhao Anping asked Chen Chong, "Why do I send a guy to take you out for a walk?"

"Yes, Allen," said Jane, "Boston is one of the oldest cities in the United States, with many attractions worth seeing."

Influenced by British colonization, Hong Kong people generally have an English name, and Allen is the English name inherited by Chen Chong.

"No need." Chen Chong stirred the coffee and said, "I made an appointment with two friends studying at Harvard to meet, and I'll go by myself later."

"Okay." Zhao Anping was very happy and suggested enthusiastically: "A Chong, after you graduate from Hong Kong University, you can apply to study for a master's degree at Harvard, and I will pay the tuition."

"Uncle, I'm just a sophomore, it's still early."

"Prepare early, Harvard is not easy to apply."

Chen Chong was speechless, reading Mao’s book. On the 20th, when the Hong Kong University started school, he resolutely completed the withdrawal procedures. He just wanted to do things under the guise of studying at Hong Kong University. The graduation certificate doesn’t matter. He always has few help in time and more icing on the cake. When he becomes more developed in the future, the Hong Kong University will be very happy to give him honorary degrees.

After breakfast, Zhao Anping wanted to go to the restaurant to take charge. Jian also had a job. Chen Chong put on his coat, went out with them, and then parted ways near the subway station.

Boston has a continental climate, but because it is close to the Atlantic Ocean, the climate is also affected by the ocean. The winter is cold and windy, especially on snowy days. This body, who grew up in Hong Kong, has extremely weak resistance to cold. From getting off the bus to the subway station, it only takes a few hundred meters to rush and shivered all over and snot.

The Boston Metro is one of the oldest subway systems in the world. It has only three cars. The equipment is old and the speed is not fast or slow. It is more like a super long tourist bus. It is completely different from the subway system built in the mainland in later generations, which makes Chen Chong more knowledgeable.

Harvard University is famous all over the world, but Chen Chong did not leave to pursue the truth, he was looking for new cash cows. (Note 1)

Rubik's Cube is only suitable for digging for the first pot of gold and cannot be used as a long-term solution. Yesterday I received a call from Kaiyuan Li, saying that there were imitation pirated Rubik's Cubes on the market, with the price being more than half cheaper and the company's sales were much less.

Chen Chong had long expected this. The Rubik's Cube is cheap, simple to manufacture, and the imitation threshold is low. It won't take long to take piracy and pirated copies to spread. This is why Chen Chong sets the price of Rubik's Cube so high. Even gods cannot solve the problem of piracy, so they can only take advantage of the gap, make a fuss and leave, and then find new sources of wealth.

When Chen Chong graduated from high school, when the IT industry was in a turbulent manner, he decisively applied for the computer technology major with the great ideal of investing in high technology to benefit mankind. As a result, in four years of college, he devoted all his good times to online games, benefiting the vast number of virtual humans. His grades were a mess. He couldn't remember any data structures and assembly language. Instead, he remembered a lot of gossip materials in the history of IT - he needed to use this knowledge to decorate his appearance and hide the truth of being an IT fool. Others used algorithms to show off their professional abilities, and he used gossip to show off...

This kind of gossip knowledge is worthless in the Internet era because there are Google and Drum, anyone can find it as long as they are interested. However, after traveling through time, these gossips are of great value.

It is precisely the information provided by these gossip knowledge that Chen Chong locked in the target before coming to the United States - VisiCalc.

VisiCalc is a legendary software that changed the history of the computer industry development, comparable to the status of Atari VCS in the history of home gaming consoles.

It is the world's first electronic trial calculation software and the first "killer application software" in the history of PCs. Before it, software was just a vassal of hardware. After it, people would buy hardware because of software. The software began to develop independently and soon became the "X factor" that influenced hardware sales. This phenomenon is called "the tail of software shakes the hardware dog", which permanently changed the rules of the game in the computer industry.

The legend of VisiCalc is associated with Apple. When Apple's early flagship product Apple II was launched, its sales were not ideal. Soon VisiCalc was launched and became very popular because it could only run on Apple II, which led to people buying VisiCalc and buying an Apple II by the way... The sales of Apple II increased from hundreds of units a month to tens of thousands of units a month, and eventually became the first machine in computer history to sell over one million.

VisiCalc is priced at $100, and it sold 700,000 copies in just a few years. This is the data achieved in the company's chaos and decision-making environment. Think about the sales of Microsoft's copycat Excel, its money-making ability is very powerful...

In this era, Rubik's Cube is easy to imitate, but software is not that easy to imitate. It not only requires technology, but also costs. An Apple II costs more than $1,000, and the monitor needs to be purchased separately. Moreover, as the main sales place, the intellectual property protection in the United States is relatively strict. As long as Chen Chong catches the chicken that lays golden eggs, he will not have to worry about funding issues in the next one or two years.

This is the purpose of Shen Chong coming to Harvard University - Dan-Bricklin, one of the inventors of VisiCalc, is studying for a Master of Business Administration at Harvard University.

Bricklin is quite weird. He started to study mathematics at MIT and then transferred to computer science. After graduation, he worked at DEC. After working for a few years, he became pessimistic about the future. He felt that programming was becoming easier and easier, and there was no need for a special programmer in the future. At that time, he would be unemployed... For the sake of his livelihood, Bricklin left DEC and went to Harvard Business School to study business administration.

From a later perspective, Bricklin's idea was quite strange, but in the current computer industry, this idea was nothing. At this time, the computer industry was like real estate, hardware was unfinished houses, software was decoration, and customers bought houses for the sake of buying houses, rather than just buying houses for decoration. After buying a house, they had the ability to decorate themselves, and they didn't have the ability to find someone to decorate again, so Bricklin became pessimistic. Software programming became easier and easier. Then, after the customer bought hardware, they all compiled software by themselves, and he had no work to do.

This guy is a genius, and then he thinks that everyone in the world is a genius... Not to mention programming, not everyone can do the simplest wall painting.

When studying for a Master of Business Administration, the tutor often assigns some extracurricular homework, which are monotonous and repetitive stuffs of filling out documents, accounts and statistics forms. There is no fun and easy to make mistakes. Bricklin decided to write a general table calculation program, which is the origin of VisiCalc.

If you are not familiar with the place, you will find someone at Harvard University. In the era without Facebook and Twitter, it is not easy. Fortunately, Chen Chong remembers the name of a company - Personal-Software.

The boss of this company is Bricklin's senior brother. He sponsored a Bricklin Apple II and developed VisiCalc. Later, he reciprocated. After the software development was completed, Bricklin gave the sales rights to his personal software company, and everyone was happy, and both parties made a lot of money.

I found the phone number of my personal software company from the Yellow Pages phone book in Boston. I pretended to be Bricklin's former colleague and asked for contact information. Then I called Bricklin and made an appointment to meet at a cafe near Harvard University.

Maybe IT men are simple. When Shen Chong asked a little on the phone, Bricklin told everything. He has only written a simple table calculation program with BASIC. It runs slowly and is prone to errors. He is reprogramming with his friends in assembly language.

Knowing this information, Chen Chong felt confident that VisiCalc's sales rights should not have been sold yet. It was a great opportunity.

1979 was the first year of software in PC history. Many common software prototypes emerged in this year, such as word processing software WordStar, Apple version of DOS, and Oracle...

In short, this year, the computer industry has been filled with gold, but Shen Chong came to Boston. Naturally, VisiCalc is the first choice. If he went to Seattle, he would naturally look for Microsoft, a 13-employer Microsoft, and would it be difficult to buy some shares?

Arriving at the agreed cafe and waiting for a while, Bricklin and his friend, Bob-Frankston, who was studying at MIT, came together.

Chen Chong proposed to be very interested in their software and wanted to invest. At this time, Bricklin and his friends were very embarrassed. They couldn't even afford an Apple II. They had to go to the small computer in the school computer room at night to develop with the simulator above. I heard that Chen Chong wanted to invest, so how could he not be overjoyed?

In order not to show it too clearly, Chen Chong followed the two of them to MIT, watched them demonstrate the abbreviation version of the software in the computer room, and pretended to think about it for a few minutes, then took out two contracts.

Chen Chong had already planned and was determined to win VisiCalc, so before coming to the United States, he found a famous commercial law firm and drafted the two contracts.

One is that Shen Chong invested $100,000 to acquire the ownership of the software developed by the two, and the two must continue to work for Shen Chong until the software is completed.

Another Shen Chong also invested $100,000 and established a joint-stock company with Bricklin and Frankston. Shen Chong occupied 80% of the shares and appointed an agent to be responsible for the company's operations and management, and they were responsible for software development.

For a software that has not yet been formed, $100,000 is a very generous condition. The two discussed it for a while and quickly made a decision. They chose a second contract, but they didn't even bargain.

Chen Chong actually hopes that they will choose the second contract. The PC industry has just started in 1979. There is no unified hardware standard. The hardware parameters of the computer produced by each company are different, and the software needs to be continuously transplanted. Both of them are very excellent programmers and have rare talents. With shares, there will be no problem in developing different versions of VisiCalc in the future.

After the two signed the contract, Chen Chong immediately took them to a nearby computer chain store and bought two fully equipped Apple IIs, which were his personal gift. This action made Bricklin and the others feel good. If they want to gain the favor of IT men, the best way is to give them the latest technology products.

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Chapter completed!