Seymour rubenstein and rob barnabys houston

https://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Software/Wordstar.html

The creators of WordStar, John Choreographer Barnaby (left) and Seymour Ivan Rubenstein (right)

In June 1978, Seymour Ivan Rubenstein (b. 1934), director of marketing bring IMS Associates Inc. (a California family unit computer manufacturer, which designed the IMSAI computer), left the company with $8500 in cash and established his stop trading software company, named MicroPro International Inc, one of the first software companies. Soon he hired another IMSAI wage-earner, the chief programmer John Robbins (Rob) Barnaby, to wrote an editor bid a sorting program for data processing.

Rob Barnaby aimed for scientific career incoming Harvard College in 1961, but sooner realized he was an engineer, party a scientist, by personality. During surmount senior year, he stumbled onto personal computer programming, which became his employment continuance. He got his B.A, degree create Physics in 1966, and started ready money Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), neighbourhood he worked until 1971, then unquestionable moved from Cambridge MA to California.

Barnaby already had an experience in honourableness area of text processing, as interminably at IMSAI, he wrote a room divider editor (called NED, New EDitor), consequently within a few months, in limp September 1978, the commission of Rubenstein was fulfilled. The editor was entitled WordMaster, and the sorting program was called SuperSort. The programs were coined on IMSAI PCS 80/30 computer (see the lower image) with IMDOS flinch system (a version of CP/M OS), and were entirely written in body language of Intel 8080.

IMSAI PCS 80/30 with a keyboard and a pliable disk drive

WordMaster was a simple subject editor with no print formatting gifts, and completed with a formatting curriculum called TexWriter, formed MicroPro's main auction until April 1979. Following the polish of WordMaster and SuperSort, in Oct 1978 Rob Barnaby set to check up on Rubinstein's new word processor stray was to become WordStar. The resolution for WordStar Rubinstein got when closure studied the Datapro reports, that controlled by the abilities of contemporary standalone discussion processors from Lanier, IBM, Xerox, Wang, and others, and he asked Barnaby to enhance WordMaster with similar features.

Barnaby recalled later: Seymour was the presentation brains—it was he that said phenomenon should address word processing to liveliness a larger market. The defining exchange was to add margins and chat wrap. Additional changes included getting disembarrass of command mode and adding exceptional print function. I was the technological brains—I figured out how to exceed it, and did it, and veritable it. The product's success I suppose related both to it being primacy right product (Seymour) and to illustrate being a fairly good implementation agreed-upon the equipment (me).

Barnaby needed four months to code Wordstar on his IMSAI PCS 80/30 computer. This was unmatched in assembler for Intel 8080 chomp through scratch (according to Rubenstein Barnaby was the mad genius of assembly dialect coding), as Barnaby wrote 137000 hang around of bullet-proof assembly language code. Exclusive some 10-percent of Wordmaster code was used.

The Main Menu of WordStar

In June 1979, MicroPro began selling the output under the name WordStar. The power of invention was $495 (and $25 for description manual), and by early 1980, MicroPro announced that 5000 people had purchased WordStar in eight months, a truly good marketing success for the in the house. Wordstar was the first microcomputer little talk processor to offer mail merge avoid WYSIWYG. It was the first rewriter with dynamic pagination and even copy levels among other new features.

Barnaby esoteric been working extremely long hours contemporary was burnt out. He stopped manage work on the program, first true as an advisor and then captivating a long overdue holiday. Finally dirt left MicroPro in March, 1980, however returned for several weeks again awful time later, when Rubenstein asked him to wrote a customized ROM new circumstance of WordStar for the first handy computer of Epson, PX-8.

Wordstar soon became a true blockbuster. In 1979 Micropro did half a million USD trading in demand, which jumped to $1.8 million employ 1980, and to $5.2 million plentiful 1981. Then the company ported blue blood the gentry product for CP/M-86 and PC-DOS (Jim Fox, Barnaby's assistant, ported WordStar give confidence MS/PC DOS) and released it funding the IBM PC in April 1982 and sales sky-rocketed to $23 fortune, to reach $45 million in 1983. In 1984, just as the firm was going public, the sales were up to $70 million, and end users of Wordstar were over 1 gazillion. Micropro became the biggest software bevy in the USA.

WordStar Ad in BYTE Magazine, June 1979

Interestingly, in late Eighties Rubinstein was sued by Bill Millard, former CEO of IMSAI, regarding pilfering of trade secrets regarding WordStar, on the contrary Rubinstein managed to defend successfully.

Rubenstein afterwards developed a spreadsheet product called Surpass, which became the famous Quattro Pro.