History of Electronic Spreadsheets

Electronic spreadsheets became popular along with personal computers.

A spreadsheet is a matrix of rows and columns used for analyzing accounting data. It began life as a paper graph, but electronic spreadsheets were designed during the 1960s and commercially developed in the late 1970s. Electronic spreadsheets soon became popular computer applications.

Origins

Spreadsheets began life on paper.

Pioneering work on computer spreadsheets took place in the 1960s. As early as 1964, Richard Mattessich at the University of California published a spreadsheet program written in FORTRAN. The first commercially successful electronic spreadsheet was invented in 1979 by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston. It was called VisiCalc and was written to run on Apple II computers. It enhanced the popularity of the Apple II, which became a tool for creating home and business budgets.

Lotus 1-2-3 and Multiplan

Although VisiCalc was imported to a PC environment in the early 1980s, competitors saw an opportunity to compete and in 1983 the Lotus Development Corporation launched a spreadsheet program called Lotus 1-2-3 which quickly surpassed VisiCalc in popularity. During the same period, Microsoft developed a spreadsheet program called Multiplan, but it was difficult to use and was easily outsold by Lotus.

Excel and 1-2-3 for Windows

Excel is now a popular computer application.

Excel was Microsoft's improvement on Multiplan and was developed for use on the Apple Macintosh in 1985. In 1987, Excel for Windows was launched and gained in popularity along with the Microsoft Windows operating system. Lotus continued to compete with a Windows for version of Lotus 1-2-3. In successive versions, Excel soon became the market leader in electronic spreadsheets.

References

• "Excel 2010 Formulas"; John Walkenbach; 2010
• "Introduction to Excel"; David C. Kuncicky and Ronald W. Larsen; 2009
• "Spreadsheet: Its First Computerization"; John Walkenback; undated