Artifact Details

Title

Carlston, Douglas oral history

Catalog Number

102658043

Type

Document

Description

Douglas Carlston describes his education in different fields including getting a law degree from Harvard Law School, building houses (on spec), and becoming an ad hoc programmer. He began writing games programs to run on his TRS-80 and Apple II and then his brother and he started selling these programs to retail computer stores around the country. He called his company Broderbund (which is sort of a faux Scandinavian name) and then signed a deal with SoftSell to distribute the programs on a much broader basis. Broderbund became very successful, first with the games programs and then with a wide range of small business and personal programs for accounting and word processing. He describes how the company was a family business (with a number of his relatives involved) and how he maintained this style of operation. The company later marketed some high volume products like Print Shop and various add-ons and derivatives. He closes with reference to taking the company public in 1991.

Date

2004-11-19

Contributor

Bergin, Thomas (Tim), Interviewer
Carlston, Douglas G., Interviewee
Grad, Burt, Editor

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, California

Extent

24 p.

Category

Transcription

Subject

Software business history; Carlston, Douglas; Broderbund; Galactic Saga games; SoftSell; Alien Rain; Accounting software; Bank Street Writer; Print Shop; Carmen Sandiego; Family Tree Maker; Software

Collection Title

Oral history collection

Lot Number

X3007.2005