VisiCalc /vi'zi-calk/
<application, tool, business, history> The first spreadsheet program,
conceived in 1978 by Dan Bricklin, while he was an MBA student at Harvard
Business School. Inspired by a demonstration given by Douglas Engelbart of a
point-and-click user interface, Bricklin set out to design an application that
would combine the intuitiveness of pencil and paper calculations with the power
of a programmable pocket calculator.
Bricklin's design was based on the (paper) financial spreadsheet, a kind of
document already used in business planning. (Some of Bricklin's notes for
VisiCalc were scribbled on the back of a spreadsheet pad.) VisiCalc was probably
not the first application to use a spreadsheet model, but it did have a number
of original features, all of which continue to be fundamental to spreadsheet
software. These include point-and-type editing, range replication, and formulas
that update automatically with changes to other cells.
VisiCalc is widely credited with creating the sudden demand for desktop
computers that helped fuel the microcomputer boom of the early 1980s. Thousands
of business people with little or no technical expertise found that they could
use VisiCalc to create sophisticated financial programs. This makes VisiCalc one
of the first killer apps.
Dan Bricklin's Site.
(2003-07-05)
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