The Learning Company began with an Apple II Plus, a speech synthesiser and $1,000. In December 1979 the educational psychologist Ann Piestrup told the Apple Education Foundation what she thought children’s software ought to be. She had spent ten years studying how children think and learn, and she had decided to make programs “when I first saw that computers could do colorful, musical, playful things”. The foundation gave her the computer and the money to hire a programmer. A few years later her company was publishing Rocky’s Boots, a game that taught nine-year-olds digital logic, and in 1984 it published Reader Rabbit, the series it is best remembered for. In the 1990s its name passed to a software company that had taken it over, and that company sold it to Mattel for $3.5 billion.
Fast facts
- Founded: about 1980, in California, to receive a research grant from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Education.
- Founder: Ann Piestrup, who brought in Teri Perl and Warren Robinett.
- Base: Portola Valley, California, in 1982–83; Menlo Park by 1984.
- Best-known programs: Rocky’s Boots (1982), Robot Odyssey (1984), Reader Rabbit (1984).
- Taken over: by SoftKey in 1995, which then adopted the Learning Company name.
- Sold: to Mattel in 1999 for $3.5 billion; Mattel passed it to Gores Technology Group in 2000.
A grant, a psychologist and an Atari programmer
BYTE’s account of the company, in May 1983, is the fullest from the time. With the Apple Education Foundation’s computer, Piestrup set up a one-woman business, Advanced Learning Technology, to receive the grant. She and another learning specialist, Barbara Jasinski, designed a first program on graph paper, screen by screen, and Alice Chiang, a consulting programmer, turned it into working code. Piestrup then took that experience to the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Education, which were jointly awarding nine grants for the use of computers in education. Her proposal won $130,000, “and she founded The Learning Company to receive it”.
She then brought in two people. Teri Perl was a mathematics educator, the author of a history of women in mathematics, Math Equals. Warren Robinett had a master’s degree in computer science from Berkeley and had been, in BYTE’s words, “a member of the original group of programmers at Atari”, where he wrote Adventure for the 2600. Video Games called Robinett a co-founder in March 1983, and he later told Retro Gamer that he co-founded the company in 1980. Some later accounts also list Leslie Grimm among the founders. BYTE does not name her, and in the period sources she appears as one of the company’s programmers and designers.
The programs made during the grant year went into the public domain. They also convinced investors, among them Tom Whitney, who had worked at Apple, and the venture capitalist Jack Melchor, that the approach could make money. In January 1982 the company raised $300,000.
Software for three- to thirteen-year-olds
The Learning Company began selling programs in 1982, and at first other companies sold them under their own labels. Atari introduced Juggles’ Rainbow and Juggles’ House in September 1982, two programs for three- to six-year-olds that taught “above, below, left and right” and “inside, outside, upper and lower”. Its magazine The Atari Connection described The Learning Company as a Portola Valley firm making programs “that turn the home computer into a learning tool that helps children learn to think conceptually”. Apple sold Magic Spells, a spelling game written by Grimm. In September 1982 The Learning Company also launched two programs under its own name for the Apple, Gertrude’s Puzzles and Rocky’s Boots, at $75 each, as the first of a family of “Discovery Tools”.
By January 1983 the company had seven programs for children aged 3 to 13, a staff of 14, three of them programmers, and 14 distributors, including Softsel, Micro D and Bell & Howell. BYTE noted that every program used colour graphics and was interactive, self-paced, “nonviolent” and easy for children to use on their own. Its president in March 1983 was Jack Smyth. The company tested its programs on children in schools, and Video Games reported that it paid “special attention” to the suggestions of 11-year-old Corrine Grimm, Leslie Grimm’s daughter and the youngest member of its pool of graphic artists. That summer The Atari Connection photographed mother and daughter creating graphics together.
On 3 December 1982 Robinett spoke at a video game seminar at Columbia University alongside Atari’s Chris Crawford. He told the audience that digital logic, once taught only at university, could now be learned through games at a much younger age. Rocky’s Boots was his proof, and in 1984 the company followed it with Robot Odyssey, designed by Mike Wallace and Grimm for teenagers.
Reader Rabbit
Reader Rabbit and the Fabulous Word Factory came out in 1984. Family Computing listed it that December: four word games for readers aged 4 to 8, “colorful animation” for younger children and harder versions for older ones, for the Apple II, the Commodore 64 and the IBM PC and PCjr, at $39.95. The company’s address had moved to Middlefield Road, Menlo Park.
The rabbit became a family. In May 1988 COMPUTE!’s summer guide to children’s software listed five Learning Company programs: Reader Rabbit, Writer Rabbit and Math Rabbit, alongside Rocky’s Boots and Think Quick. Reader Rabbit now ran on the Apple II, the Apple IIgs, the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS, at $39.95 to $59.95, and “the IIGS version of Reader Rabbit even talks!” In the same guide Math Blaster belonged to a rival, Davidson, and The Oregon Trail to MECC.
The name changes hands
In October 1995 the software publisher SoftKey made a hostile bid of about $606 million for The Learning Company, in competition with a bid from Brøderbund. SoftKey won, and then renamed itself The Learning Company. From then on the name belonged to the buyer. It also bought MECC and with it The Oregon Trail, and in 1998 it bought Mindscape from Pearson and, that summer, Brøderbund, the publisher of Myst and Carmen Sandiego. Edge and Computer Gaming World both reported the Brøderbund purchase as part of that year’s wave of takeovers in the games business.
Mattel, the toy company, bought the enlarged Learning Company in 1999. Computer Gaming World put the price at $3.5 billion. The software business lost so much money that it lowered Mattel’s earnings and drove down its share price, and Mattel’s chief executive Jill Barad resigned. In late September 2000 Mattel handed The Learning Company, which by then also owned Mindscape and SSI, to Gores Technology Group. The terms were not disclosed, but the Wall Street Journal reported that Mattel “essentially gave the division away” for a share of any future earnings. Gores later sold the educational business to Riverdeep, which became part of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; the Learning Company name was used as a brand of Houghton Mifflin from 2006.
Sources
- “BYTE West Coast: Ferment in Silicon Valley”, BYTE vol. 8 no. 5, May 1983, pp. 268–269: Piestrup’s background and quotation, the Apple Education Foundation, Advanced Learning Technology, Jasinski and Chiang, the $130,000 grant, Perl and Robinett, the public-domain grant programs, the investors and the $300,000, the seven programs, staff and distributors.
- Teddi Converse, “Juggles’ Rainbow and Juggles’ House”, The Atari Connection vol. 2 no. 4, September 1982, p. 20: the two Atari programs, The Learning Company in Portola Valley, and Piestrup as “primary founder”.
- COMPUTE! issue 28, September 1982, p. 214: new products (Gertrude’s Puzzles and Rocky’s Boots, the “Discovery Tool” family, $75).
- COMPUTE! issue 34, March 1983: review of Magic Spells (Apple Computer, written by Leslie Grimm).
- Lois Cantwell, news pages, Video Games vol. 1 no. 6, March 1983, pp. 14–15: TLC’s Apple programs, president Jack Smyth, Corrine Grimm, and the Columbia University seminar with Robinett “co-founder of The Learning Company”.
- The Atari Connection vol. 3 no. 2, Summer 1983, p. 45: Leslie Grimm and her daughter Cori creating graphics for The Learning Company.
- COMPUTE! issue 48, May 1984, p. 130: Teri Perl and Math Equals.
- Family Computing vol. 2 no. 12, December 1984, p. 120: software guide entry for Reader Rabbit and the Fabulous Word Factory (©1984, ages 4–8, platforms, $39.95, Menlo Park address).
- Fred D’Ignazio, “Kids, Computers, and Summer Vacation”, COMPUTE! issue 96, May 1988, pp. 22–25: the Rabbit family, the talking IIgs version, and the summer software table.
- Computer Gaming World issue 172, November 1998: news analysis of the year’s takeovers, including The Learning Company’s purchase of Brøderbund.
- Edge issue 63, October 1998: news (The Learning Company’s purchase of Brøderbund).
- Mark Asher, “Mattel Dumps Games Division”, Computer Gaming World issue 198, January 2001: the $3.5 billion price, the sale to Gores Technology Group, the Wall Street Journal report, Jill Barad’s resignation, Mindscape and SSI.
- Retro Gamer issue 115, June 2013, p. 73: Warren Robinett on co-founding The Learning Company in 1980.
- “The Learning Company” and “SoftKey”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): the founding date, SoftKey’s $606 million hostile bid of October 1995 against Brøderbund, the change of name, MECC, the Mindscape purchase from Pearson in March 1998, the Brøderbund agreement of June 1998, Riverdeep and Houghton Mifflin, and Brøderbund as the publisher of Myst and Carmen Sandiego. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Learning_Company and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftKey