Biography | David Baszucki — The San Mateo Suite Where Interactive Physics Was Written

In July 1989 David Baszucki and his brother Greg incorporated Knowledge Revolution in San Mateo, California.

The documented office later listed for the firm was 66 Bovet Road, Suite 200, in the Hayward Park section of the city.

From that desk David wrote a general-purpose physics simulator in Object Pascal for the Macintosh Plus and named it Interactive Physics.

Users dragged parts, hinges, ropes, and springs onto a 2-D stage and measured what the model did.

Teachers used it to check textbook problems. Students used it to crash cars and knock houses down.

Erik Cassel, a recent Cornell physics graduate, read about the company in MacUser, flew west, and was hired after Baszucki looked at a program Cassel had written for Cornell's physics department.

Interactive Physics II appeared in April 1992. The software was translated into nine languages.

In December 1998 MSC Software acquired Knowledge Revolution. Contemporary reports put the sale at about 20 million dollars.

Baszucki stayed on as vice president and general manager of the Working Knowledge division until 2002.

The recreational use of a classroom physics lab is the specific observation he and Cassel later carried into Roblox.

This pin is a former company office in an ordinary San Mateo office building, not a residence and not Roblox's present headquarters.

Photo: Steve Jennings for TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0, TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, 5 September 2018.