When was the spreadsheet first used

How does the current euphoria rate? Is there a bubble? Speculation is always there, with intermittent reinforcement. The things people say about the future sometimes turn out to be right, but the timing is wrong. In an interview [ in ], Nikola Tesla said something about a pocket computer that basically described FaceTime or Skype on a smartphone. Eventually, we got to it. I also love the story of Helen Greiner. She went on to co-found iRobot, whose products really can disarm bombs.

I lucked out by being in the right place in the right time. People bet on this, and some succeed. What ideas may sound crazy now but will someday become commonplace? Right now, we have people who are moving around when they work. A desktop computer is not appropriate for them. Doctors, nurses, boiler repairmen… those people are not computerized in many ways. The smartphone and tablet are now light enough and powerful enough to replace paper. Spreadsheets are designed for heavy analysis. And so the spreadsheet comes to the rescue of the desktop computer, once again.

So is there an equivalent to the spreadsheet that will someday revolutionize the mobile world? What types of tools do we need on a mobile device? Entering lots of data into a spreadsheet is not it. One of the most interesting ways to input data on the mobile is the camera. That is an area of interest. Clever people, like those who first figured out how to use spreadsheets for their business, are going to look at the capabilities of these devices and come up with new services. A lot of it is trial and error.

The spreadsheet happened to be the right program, on the right hardware, at the right time. People who worry about these things push for people to ditch Excel in favor of more centralized, security-conscious tools for building databases and running analyses.

This is futile, not least because there is a thriving cottage industry in software and consulting for companies to better manage their spreadsheets, acknowledging that they are now a permanently ingrained feature of the corporate world, for better or worse.

And like other office technologies , our love-hate relationship with spreadsheets makes them a popular source of ridicule , allowing co-workers to bond over the perversity of pivot tables and sorrow of circular references. On this hallowed day, take a moment to marvel at how what was conceived as a simple scratchpad has so quickly amassed such global power and influence. Lotus was also the first spreadsheet vendor to introduce naming cells, cell ranges and spreadsheet macros. Part of that money along with funds from venture capitalist Ben Rosen were used to start Lotus Development Corporation in Supposedly VisiCorp executives declined the offer because Lotus 's functionality was "too limited".

The number of employees at Lotus grew to over a thousand by This rapid growth led to a shakeout in the spreadsheet segment of the personal computer software industry. A Lotus spokeperson indicated at that time that " and Symphony are much better products so Visicalc is no longer necessary. The next milestone was the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Excel was originally written for the K Apple Macintosh in Excel was one of the first spreadsheets to use a graphical interface with pull down menus and a point and click capability using a mouse pointing device.

The Excel spreadsheet with a graphical user interface was easier for most people to use than the command line interface of PC-DOS spreadsheet products. There is some controversy about whether a graphical version of Microsoft Excel was released in a DOS version. Microsoft documents show the launch of Excel 2.

When Microsoft launched the Windows operating system in , Excel was one of the first application products released for it. When Windows finally gained wide acceptance with Version 3. For nearly 3 years, Excel remained the only Windows spreadsheet program and it has only received competition from other spreadsheet products since the summer of By the late s many companies had introduced spreadsheet products.

Spreadsheet products and the spreadsheet software industry were maturing. Microsoft and Bill Gates had joined the fray with the innovative Excel spreadsheet. Lotus had acquired Software Arts and the rights to VisiCalc. The spreadsheet entrepreneurs were moving on In January of , Lotus Development filed suit against Paperback Software and separately against Mosaic Software claiming they had infinged on the Lotus spreadsheet software.

In a related matter, Software Arts, the developerof the original VisiCalc spreadsheet software filed a separate action against Lotus claiming that Lotus was an infringement of VisiCalc. Briefly, Lotus won the legal battles, but lost the "market share war" to Microsoft. Later on, they transitioned Excel to the Windows environment, and there was no looking back. Since then, Microsoft Excel has been the most dominant spreadsheet software over the last two decades.

Although Microsoft Excel has remained the ultimate spreadsheet software even today, there remain several notable competitor spreadsheet applications on the market. There have also been a number of non-proprietary, free, open-source alternative applications such as OpenOffice. Spreadsheets have come a long way over the past few decades, and they are continuing to become more intuitive, flexible and powerful than ever.

In just the past few years, spreadsheet software now offers powerful analytical tools to turn data into useful insights. The most notable is their visual representation, that now helps businesses project future developments for their companies. Moreover, cloud-based spreadsheets are now a key part of many organizations. This has revolutionized the way businesses can work, allowing offline collaboration anywhere, increasing productivity for many. The latest phenomenon in the spreadsheet world is the automation of spreadsheet processes.

The potential of these automation tools is almost limitless, too. Now, businesses can build and scale a variety of complex systems through the simple connection of spreadsheets.