I guess I missed this official date (Nov 17th) but the program (VisiCalc) had been announced and demonstrated (for the Apple II) earlier that year at a computer convention in June. The spreadsheet was an ingenious idea--a true computing invention. It suddenly enabled fairly complex models of all kinds to be developed: financial, scientific, mathematical, more. It worked well for simple tasks such as making lists or complex business models. It turned the personal computer, which prior had been a niche novelty, into a powerful tool. It was the program that put computers into businesses and was probably single-handedly responsible for truly launching the personal computer revolution. As was true of many pioneering pieces of software, such as CP/M (replaced by DOS), Wordstar (replaced by WordPerfect), and others, Visicalc was soon eclipsed by more competitive rivals (in this case Lotus 1-2-3), but their original ingenuity lives on!
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 04:48:17 +0000
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