Editing Quattro Pro (section)

==Origins==
The original Borland Quattro electronic spreadsheet was a DOS program, the initial development of which was done by three Eastern Europeans, one of whom, the Hungarian Lajos Frank, was later hired by Microsoft.  An article appeared in ''PC Week'' in 1985, quoting a maker of spreadsheet templates saying that he was in close contact with Borland, and that Borland was developing a spreadsheet.  At the time, there was absolutely no such development being undertaken by Borland.  After they both read the article,  Philippe Kahn and Spencer Leyton had a casual conversation where they joked, half seriously, about perhaps developing a spreadsheet to compete with Lotus Development's 1-2-3.  That led to Mr. Kahn setting an appointment with an agent for some Eastern European software developers, Robert Stein of Andromeda Software, which was also involved with the game ''[[Tetris]]''.  That led to an agreement negotiated by Mr. Leyton and Mr. Stein, providing for the development of the original Quattro.

Quattro was written in [[assembly language]] and [[Turbo C]], principally by [[Adam Bosworth]], Lajos Frank, and Chuck Batterman. It was praised mainly for superior graphics on DOS. Borland acquired a replacement product called "Surpass", written in [[Modula-2]]. The main designers and programmers of Surpass were also hired by Borland to turn Surpass into Quattro Pro: Bob Warfield, Dave Anderson, Weikuo Liaw, Bob Richardson and Tod Landis. They joined other Borland programmers including Chuck Batterman, Lajos Frank, Tanj Bennett, Rich Reppert and Roger Schlafly. Bob Warfield later became Vice President of R&D at Borland. All eventually left Borland.

Quattro Pro shipped in the final quarter of 1989. The Borland main office was near the epicenter of the [[Loma Prieta earthquake]] and the building was severely damaged when large and heavy air conditioners on the roof of Borland's main building were thrown upward by the quake, and came crashing down upon the [[Glued laminated timber|glulam]] beams running across the top of the building.  The beams were damaged to the point where they required injections of epoxy in order to make them sturdy enough to support the building again.  In addition, the sprinkler system was triggered. The building was closed for months. All the computers were removed, placed on the tennis courts, washed down (acoustic ceilings rained gray mush onto everything when the sprinklers ran) and dried with hair dryers. Those that booted up were put to work. Quattro Pro finished final [[quality assurance]] testing and was sent to manufacturing from those computers running on the tennis courts in the (fortunately) sunny and dry autumn weather.