2002—Memoirs: To Die at Abt Associates, 1983
It was all Clark’s fault. That has to be clear from the outset.

In the early 1980’s (sorry, but my discombobulated memory doesn’t fix it any tighter than that), Clark Abt and I ran into each other at the Abt Associates mailboxes. Back then, they were right by the main stairs, by the “new” main entrance. Clark exclaimed, “Andy! You’ve got to have an Apple!” And, sure enough, before the day was out, a brand-new Apple II desktop microcomputer showed up on my desk, at the top of the Reality Gap’s huge red stairs. With a whole 16 kilobytes of Random Access Memory! Right on my desk! I’ve always been a sucker for new toys, and so it wasn’t long before I’d learned Applesoft Basic and simulated the meat of Jack Cohen’s classic work on statistical power as an interactive aid to sample design. Called it SampleCalc. Came in handy more than once, as will appear.

The Apples aroused no end of hilarity among the computer establishment at Abt Associates. My old Follow Through comrade Sandy Friedman suffered from reflex eyebrow elevation and a distinct snicker tic at the mention of such “toys.” At least I assume it was involuntary. Viewed from under his eyebrows, micros just didn’t measure up to the Company’s serious machine, a recently-acquired Prime mini-computer. Project work had already involved me heavily with both, of course, and Clark responded to the internal tension by appointing me (in 1982, I think) Director of a new Computer Division, with responsibility for the Prime and for an equally-new Abt Microcomputer Software enterprise. Not to mention (please, let’s
don’t) the already-moribund Abt Computer Graphics Corporation. I inherited the office suite of the recently-departed Jack Fultz, behind the cafeteria, along with supervisory responsibility for a rather fractious group of largely-nocturnal computer geeks (gee, did we already call them that? Perhaps not).

In more than a decade at Abt Associates, that was the first time I’d reported directly to Clark. From such friends (and buffering intermediaries) as Peter Miller, Joanie Mullen, and Wendell Knox, I’d gathered that it was a heady experience to face, daily and unfiltered, the full fecundity of Clark’s idea output. I continue to stand in awe of the skillful and serene way they responded to it. If I had managed to learn anything from them in that regard, it never became apparent.

As Abt Microcomputer Software, we offered SampleCalc to the world. Also an early and fairly elegant piece of communications software, whose name I forget, along with that of its very bright and pleasant author. Beyond that, not much. Coming to the enterprise with no marketing knowledge or experience—and perhaps even less native inclination—I wasn’t making money for the company, and tensions began to rise, at least in my mind.

Meanwhile, my directorial bonnet swarmed with one principal bee: the gestation of a nameless (as far as I recall) software package with which I proposed to revolutionize business decision-making, writ large. By then the Apple //e had brought us 64 kilobytes of random- access memory, not to mention native upper- and lower-case display capability, and we thought we’d died and
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Chapter 3
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Chapter 4
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2001
2002
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