The Inspiration Behind Visio

John Nack: "JFK was in office, and yet the app Sketchpad (from then-25-year-old Ivan Sutherland) offered multitouch input, auto-correction of vector strokes, and even reusable symbols (a la Flash, Illustrator, etc.). " - How about reusable symbols a la Visio! I remember Jeremy Jaech, a Visio co-founder and our CEO and President, showing us this very video and explaining how it inspired what was to become Visio.

If you watch the video pay close attention to the gesturing, especially using one "tool" to do both lines and arcs. When I joined Visio in early 1992 Visio, the application, then called Mainline, was in its infancy, pre 1.0. It had one drawing tool, the pencil. That pencil could gesture lines and arcs depending on how you gestured with the mouse.

Visio is the granddaddy of reusable, drag and drop, shapes for non-artists, market.

Labels: Visio