First Internet message and ...

[Fred Cisin]

On Tue, 26 Nov 2019, TeoZ via cctalk wrote:
> The only reason Apple sold so many Apple II's was because some software 
> designer came out with Visicalc.

Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston  ("Software Arts")
They sold it through "Personal Software", who became "VisiCorp"
http://www.bricklin.com/history/sai.htm

Frankly, I think that word processing was more responsible than 
spreadsheet for microcomputer sales.
But, Apple had a headstart by having both.

A far from complete and only partially chronological list:
Electric Pencil  (Michael Shrayer)
Electric Pencil for CP/M  (with a program to transfer files from Electric 
Pencil disks to and from CP/M disks)
Wordstar for CP/M (MicroPro (later WordStar, Inc))
Easy Writer (Apple II, by John Draper)
Scripsit (TRS80)
Electric Pencil for TRS80
Easy Writer for IBm PC
Wordstar for PC
Electric Pencil for PC (Harv Pennington)
Microsoft Word  (PC and Apple)
WordPervert
PC-Write (Bob Wallace)