VisiCalc Turns 25, Creators Interviewed 149
Xaroth writes "It's hard to believe that it's already been 25 years since the release of one of the world's first 'killer apps.' 1979 saw the creation of VisiCalc, the first microcomputer-based spreadsheet and the single application that launched widespread computer use among businesses.
To remember this event, PC World has published portions of interviews with the three co-creators of the modern spreadsheet: Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston, and Dan Fylstra. Alternately, check out the Software History website for more information on this and other historical bits."
Test it out! (Score:5, Informative)
I bet there's a Linux one floating around out there, I guess I'll try to WINE this one.
Re:Test it out! (Score:2)
You're gonna try to not an emulator it?
Dosemu works (Score:5, Informative)
Wine ? But its a dos program (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if it did, there are plenty of dos emulation tools out there... that are FULLY functional.
( not slamming the WINE people, they just arent finished yet.. )
It is also... (Score:2)
Re:Wine ? But its a dos program (Score:2)
Apple II (the platform it was released on)
IBM PC
Other than that, I don't think it ran on anything else.
Software History website basically a placeholder (Score:5, Informative)
As far as I can tell, it has absolutely zero content about Visicalc, and I have no idea why it was linked to in the first place.
Re:Software History website basically a placeholde (Score:3, Informative)
In May, the Software History Center in Boston reunited veterans of the PC's first decade to reminisce and exchange war stories. The luminaries included the three principals behind VisiCalc: Dan Bricklin, who conceived the idea; Bob Frankston, who programmed VisiCalc; and Dan Fylstra, whose VisiCorp brought the product to a surprised world. Here are edited versions of interviews with all three.
Given that it was the original source of the interviews, it seemed appropriate to mention it i
Would they... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Would they... (Score:1, Interesting)
The question is, would they have patented it?
Re:Would they... (Score:3, Interesting)
Download, anyone? (Score:1, Redundant)
Many Slashdot readers may know this, but there will be a good number who don't... It's not mentioned in the linked articles, but you can go to http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm and download Visicalc.
They needed databases, too... (Score:3, Interesting)
The original author still does DB work for this company [stoneedge.com].
Re:They needed databases, too... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They needed databases, too... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:They needed databases, too... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:They needed databases, too... (Score:3, Informative)
Well over 10 million Apple IIs were manufactured and sold. Remember that "Apple II" as a general term includes Apple II, Apple II plus, Apple IIe, Apple IIc, Apple IIc+, and Apple IIgs machines. On top of that there were millions of clones produced all over the world.
Re:They needed databases, too... (Score:2)
I even tried Web Archive, which got me either blank pages or redirects to that SWF mentioned above...
Small fact... (Score:5, Interesting)
Other Small Fact... (Score:4, Interesting)
Some time ago there was the question raised concerning ownership and transfer of patents, etc. of the spreadsheet, which everyone and his kid brother eventually made their own version of. IIRC the creators didn't feel they actually sold all rights or something to that effect (sound similar to the SCO/Linux debacle?) Anyone know what has been determined in that regard? Seems if it was still unresolved it would make SCO/Linux look like a tempest in a teapot by comparison.
Re:Other Small Fact... (Score:3, Informative)
Visicalc came out in 1979. At that time, software patents were rarely granted. (Our legal system has corrupted patents since that time.) Dan Bricklin has some information about Visicalc and panents on his website.
http://www.bricklin.com/patenting.htm [bricklin.com]
jEdit beats the pants off it (Score:1, Interesting)
jEdit, through its pluggable Java architecture allows the addition of user-created plug ins. One of these is the double bookkeeping plug in.
Every accountant to whom I introduced this to (it's free as in gratis and libre) has told me how much more productive they are using this set up than using plain old spreadsheets.
Basically, the goal of computing is to mimic and make easier real-life processes.
Re:jEdit beats the pants off it (Score:2, Funny)
Re:jEdit beats the pants off it (Score:4, Insightful)
Improv was a truly innovative system, which I think represents a logical method of fast data handling.
Also, could jEdit have been developed if VisiCalc and Improv had not come before it?
Lotus Improv (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder how many other revolutionary applications Lotus developed and later buried?
AmiPro (Score:2)
AFAIK they didn't develop it, but they definitely buried it.
Re:Lotus Improv (Score:3, Interesting)
You're correct -- Agenda was beyond cool. It remains my favorite piece of software ever. Damn, that thing ran my life for about three years. Then Lotus bought Organizer from Threadz and killed off development of an Agenda for Windows.
As to your other question, let's see...Agenda was best-of-breed, as was was Magellan. I alwa
Re:jEdit beats the pants off it (Score:2)
Re:jEdit beats the pants off it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:jEdit beats the pants off it (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing that would be nice would be a sheet that had a different display for user input data and calc'd data (I have my own shorthand but wouldn't it be nice if the sheet just formatted them automatically?
My employer spend millions of dollars redesigning their database input and report forms so they would be the same as the old mainframe systems. Dumb to us, but most users were rendered helpless by something different, even if it was more efficient. Something that looks like what a user is comfortable with is sometimes more useful than a powerful, flexible, but different tool.
Re:jEdit beats the pants off it (Score:5, Insightful)
so, you forgot to preface your post with RTFA.
Re:jEdit beats the pants off it (Score:5, Interesting)
And yet VisiCalc was designed to mimic a real-world operation. IIRC, industrial planners used to have large blackboards divided into grids and each square in the grid could hold a number or an equation. When a number was changed in one square, all the dependent squares had to be recalculated. Of course, the concern was that something had been missed. I believe Bricklin heard one of his professors describe this process and chose it as his model for what eventually became VisiCalc.
I think I read this in Cringely's Accidental Empires.
Re:jEdit beats the pants off it (Score:2)
I can only partially agree with you. Spreadsheets are great tools, but what I see are people using them for everything; i.e., for jobs they were never intended to do.
Example: recently I had a user ask me to split a large file up into smaller files of ~60K records each. Why? So that they would fit in his spreadsheet. Instead, I offered to show him how to use the systems query product to get the information he was looking for. It opened up a whole new world for
Re:jEdit beats the pants off it (Score:2)
I would disagree. The spreadsheet was a HUGE help to his productivity. Without a spreadsheet, he'd have been doing the work in a word processor, or worse, on paper.
But I grant your point that using a tool when a BETTER tool is available can carry a huge opportunity cost.
Re:jEdit beats the pants off it (Score:2)
If he had not had a spreadsheet, he probably would have come to me first and asked for a report (like back in the good old days when nobody had a PC on their desk). At which point I would have showed him how to use the query manager (a 20+ year-old product) and, voila!
Using your logic, if he were building something, one would say he was more productive for using a crescent wrench to bang in a nail, instead of walking over to his neighbor to borrow a hammer.
Neglecting key points there... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:jEdit beats the pants off it (Score:4, Insightful)
Technically, it was real-life [thefreedictionary.com] that gave Bricklin his idea in the first place. To quote:
Bricklin has spoken of watching his university professor create a table of calculation results on a blackboard. When the professor found an error, he had to tediously erase and rewrite a number of sequential entries in the table, triggering Bricklin to think that he could replicate the process on a computer....
OOP is not a panacea (Score:2)
Not to flame...but you sound like a very, very recent OOP convert.
The goal of computing is NOT necessarily to mimic and make easier real-life processes. Look at Tetris. Does that have any real-life equivalent, blinkenlights notwithstanding?
And OOP is really bad (or at least awkward and ineffici
Hex (Score:2)
Re:Hex (Score:2)
I was hoping for it to be just a cell format, like Percentage and Number, rather than a set of functions though, but I guess functions are OK if you sacrifice another column.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Happy Anniversary -- Remember the Visicalc song (Score:2)
Ah ... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ah ... (Score:5, Informative)
Good thing you posted as anonymous coward so that the world will not know just how clueless you really are.
Even difficult problems like the travelling salesman or Towers of Hanoi have been solved and added to the calculation engine. This kind of feature adding essentially reduces the calculation time of these problems to a O(1) table lookup.
WHAT? Start making sense. Towers of Hanoi is a 2^n problem, but it doesn't actually "solve" anything. A look-up table would make absolutely no sense. Do you need a look up table to figure out what a stack of rings looks like on peg 2 as opposed to peg 1? You could make a LUT for "move X", but the problem grows so fast, you can quickly see that just 40 discs would create a LUT that would fill most raid arrays.
The traveling salesman is NP-complete. Transforming it to a problem in P has never been done. The notion of a LUT for this problem is silly. You can only precompute the LUT for one instance of the problem. If you can convert all possible such problems to an O(1) lookup table though, you will have solved the P=NP problem and can claim the US$1million prize.
Because you are probably a sysadmin with a degree from DeVry and don't understand that notation, I'll explain it simply: O(1) means "really fast".
You've never taken computing theory yourself, have you? The next paragraph you write emphasizes that either you didn't, or you slept through the class:
If we consider that a signed 16 bit integer can only handle values between -16k through 16k,
2^15 ~= 32K
it becomes obvious that Visicalc simply couldn't handle the types of calculations that we are performing today
Even back in 1979, computers had the same computational power as a turing machine. They could perform the same calculations as computers today, their only limiting factor is available memory and available time.
(32 bits allows us values of +-2 trillion).
2^31 ~= 2 billion (or if you're one of those UK types, 2 thousand million)
Re:Ah ... (Score:2, Interesting)
<CS101>
If we are being educational, lets do it right. O(1) does not mean really fast. A calculation that takes 6 years could still be O(1). O(1) simply means the calculation is constant, regardless of what is input. O(n) basically means the more data (n) you give it, the longer it takes. And you can take it from there (double it, square it, take a l
Re:Ah ... (Score:2)
O(1) does not mean that the calculations are constant, or that they take constant time. It means that there exists an upper limit(in time) as to how long the operation will take no matter the input size.
Re:Ah ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ah ... (Score:2)
This is absolute bullshit. Computers are becoming faster, sometimes without using more matter. They are just becoming smaller.
You should say "No amount of computer power means that there is not enough matter in the known universe to build a computer (With the current technologies) that can solve the problem fast enough"
Some Special on TV (Score:5, Interesting)
The accountant supposedly started visibly shaking and proclaimed "Do you realize just how much time this will save me??"
I just found that bit interesting for all the people who hold onto "the good old days" and question if computers have really helped or hindered us.
In my mind I try to imagine just where we would be if we still only had large main frames. The power of the PC is truely amazing.
(sorry just got back from a workout and am high on endorphines (or whatever they are))
Re:Some Special on TV (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Didn't save any time (Score:3, Interesting)
It's like many other situations: You'll pay for as much information as you can get, rather than just get the same information more cheaply.
Re:Some Special on TV (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Capitalism (Score:3)
Nah...because there'd always be someone working harder than you in some other society, and eventually they'd come take your cake. Sad but true.
Re:Capitalism (Score:2)
Just common sense. The world economy works on trade, because no one place has all the elements they need (well, need is subjective) to live at their current level.
If one country decides to work less, they produce less, their trade deficit goes up, and eventually they run out of money because they're ignoring progress. Essentially they devalue themselves.
This would only work if:
a) everyone changed
b) you found
Re:Some Special on TV (Score:2, Interesting)
Isn't revisionist history wonderful? You're obviously unaware that computerized spreadsheets were running on mainframes nearly 15 years before VisiCalc. Look here [dssresources.com], for instance. Supercomp-Twenty was a strong mainframe-based spreadsheet at about the same time as VisiCalc. To suggest progress would not have been made without the PC is specious at best.
Re:Some Special on TV (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Some Special on TV (Score:2)
Wow, I've never seen an accountant visibly shake!
Re:Some Special on TV (Score:2)
Try turning in an expense report, complete with the itemized receipts, from a trip to Japan back at a US office. I suspect it was more a mental seg fault than quivering in delight, however...
Re:Some Special on TV (Score:2)
Re:Some Special on TV (Score:2)
Hold on there for a minute. DEC VAXs had DECCALC [okstate.edu] , email, chat, clusters, paint programs, EDT (like emacs) fortran, etc. etc. in 1979
Unfortunately, all the hardware is probably dead now, and it was very expensive when new. On the other hand, the uptime was better than PCs, and there were no problems with users installing viruses, games, and other crapware at work. Users interfa
Re:Some Special on TV (Score:2)
Re:Some Special on TV (Score:2)
Then he'd really have a reason to shake.
what about the NEXT killer app? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that community is coming back. With the Web, blogs, e-mail, and cell phones, we're seeing a resurgence in community. Technology is now something for bringing people together.
Visiclac kicked off ebusiness, email gave us instant global communications, mobile phones let us do that on the move, whats next?
Re:what about the NEXT killer app? (Score:2, Funny)
Rocketpacks with streaming audio obviously...
You mean.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:You mean.. (Score:4, Funny)
too bad they didn't GPL it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:too bad they didn't GPL it (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, wait... nevermind.
Re:too bad they didn't GPL it (Score:1)
Yeah, everybody knows that execlp is where it's at. No manual path searching for me, no sir! Oh wait...
Re:too bad they didn't GPL it (Score:5, Insightful)
Software like this would still be useful (Score:2)
I wouldn't mind some cut down spreadsheet software, a number-processing equivalent of a plain text editor compared to a full blown word processor.
Shouldn't be too hard to create something like this, I'm sure. EasySheet. KSheet. GSheet. OhSheet!
Too much software has been enticed by the lure of features and complexity, at the expense of simplicity and doing what most people need it to do.
Re:Software like this would still be useful (Score:2)
history evolving / revealing over time (Score:2)
I wonder what other software myths will fade or be debunked in the next twenty years.
First Programming gig... (Score:4, Interesting)
It was 1982, I was 13, and a guy paid me $50 to create a spreadsheet for him that would let him calculate his cost per share of some stock he was buying over multiple purchases (dollar cost averaging).
Re:First Programming gig... (Score:1)
(if you don't mind answering)
Re:First Programming gig... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:First Programming gig... (Score:2)
VisiCalc vs. Microsoft Multiplan (Score:2, Interesting)
Apparently, rumor was that SCO was hired to port Multiplan [google.com] (to various *nix's I would guess).
Anyway, it's inte
Re:VisiCalc vs. Microsoft Multiplan (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope. In fact, Microsoft kept failing at spreadsheets until long after Lotus 123 became popular. It wasn't until Microsoft was able to leverage Windows that they finally gained a foothold. Of course, that's a story in itself.
Interestingly enough, the whole Windows story has a lot to do with VisiCalc. You see, VisiCalc took all their hard earned money and put it into creating a piece of software known as VisiOn. VisiOn was the first PC GUI for DOS. Given that Graphical User Interfaces had been the domain of expensive Unix machines, this worried Microsoft a great deal. So they announced Microsoft Windows.
In typical Microsoft fashion, they really didn't have anything. But they managed to spam the media and make everyone put off purchasing VisiOn in hopes that this mystical "Windows" would be a far better investment.
The early betas of MS Windows were actually nothing more than a way of multitasking different DOS apps. By pressing certain keys, you could switch from one "Full Screen Window" to another. About that time, Apple introduced the world to a true WIMP interface. This caused Microsoft to change directions. When the first version of MS Windows was delivered, it allowed for multiple programs to run in tiled windows. One window could be maximized at any time, thus obscuring the other windows. To be blunt, this sucked.
Windows 2.0 was only slightly better, but it sucked too. Windows 3.0 finally hit the mark by delivering a full WIMP interface and a program manager. Why Microsoft thought the program manager was a good idea when the Macintosh showed otherwise, is a mystery that will forever remain unsolved.
VisiOn (Score:1)
So I think they probably got out at the best time.
I also seem to remember GEM (better product IMHO) coming out around the same time, so the marketplace had plenty of competitors at that time.
Re:VisiOn (Score:2)
I also seem to remember GEM (better product IMHO) coming out around the same time, so the marketplace had plenty of competitors at that time.
Didn't GEM go on to become popular on various early handheld devices? In fact, I seem to remember that it was GEM handhelds that first introduced the "Graffiti" handwriting recognition that was later used in US Robotics Palm Pilots.
Re:VisiOn (Score:2)
GEM / OpenGEM (Score:2)
BTW, a version of GEM still exists ... OpenGEM [shaneland.co.uk] and GEMini.
-jh
Re:VisiOn (Score:2)
GEM, on the other hand, I do know - my Jr. High School Ele
Re:VisiCalc vs. Microsoft Multiplan (Score:2)
TopView was a disaster but it probably killed any of the competitors, including multidos and VisiOn. It was actually IBM pulling the Microsoft stunt of advance annoucement to kill your competitors.
Windows was always run in graphical mode, and was a good deal later than VisiOn. You are describing accurately the pre-3.0 tiled versions of Windows, however. I worked with those as well. The fonts were so bad that it did
Re:VisiCalc vs. Microsoft Multiplan (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I'm talking about the pre-release stuff that Microsoft sent to the computer mags of the time. They described how a slight change to your DOS code would make it "Windows Compatible", which basically meant that it could be suspended and replaced on the screen at any time.
As for preannouncing, my source is the book "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates", an insider's description of what happened inside Microsoft. It's r
Re:VisiCalc vs. Microsoft Multiplan (Score:2)
http://toastytech.com/guis/win203question.gif is a screenshot of 2.03, and it's remarkably like http://toastytech.com/guis/win30help.gif (a screen of 3.00a)
Re:VisiCalc vs. Microsoft Multiplan (Score:2)
That was the invention of what came to be called vaporware.
Why Microsoft thought the program manager was a good idea when the Macintosh showed otherwise, is a mystery that will forever remain unsolved.
A rumor says that it was Bill Gate's pride. Although in many ways Microsoft was willing to copy, they also had a "not invented here" attitude and included their own creations not on objective merit, but from emotional attachment. (They'd s
Re:VisiCalc vs. Microsoft Multiplan (Score:3, Insightful)
Like a lot of great computer scivement, VisiCalc lacked good marketing.
Re:VisiCalc vs. Microsoft Multiplan (Score:2)
Like a lot of great computer scivement, VisiCalc lacked good marketing.
It was flying off the shelves in its heydey.
Excel is ubiquitous (at least partially) because it is part of the de facto office suite, and preinstalled on so many machines.
Implementing Visicalc (Score:5, Informative)
Read this website several months ago and it's quite detailed. Maybe more than you wanted to know but it's very detailed and is a good read.
Implementing Visicalc [frankston.com]
Microsoft patent application (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Microsoft patent application (Score:2)
Am I the only one... (Score:3, Insightful)
There once was a time when software really was art. Now, it's a steely business. Back in 1979, Bill Gates was only some weenie whining because people were pirating paper tapes of his BASIC.
And still going strong! (probably) (Score:3, Interesting)
Smallest spreadsheet ever... (with RPN features) (Score:2)
Size of source code: 1,536 bytes
Source: http://www.formation.jussieu.fr/ars/2000-2001/C/c o urs/COMPLEMENTS/DOC/www.ioccc.org/2000/jarijyrki.c
Makefile: http://www.formation.jussieu.fr/ars/2000-2001/C/co urs/COMPLEMENTS/DOC/www.ioccc.org/2000/Makefile
E xternal files: http://www.formation.jussieu.fr/ars/2000-2001/C/co urs/COMPLEMENTS/DOC/www.ioccc.org/2000/sheet1.info
Usage: make jarijyrki;
Intellectual property theft (Score:2)
Ken Brown of the ADTI will be releasing a ground breaking book soon, which will prove it!
Before I go RTFA (Score:2)
"/Dread"
Heh! (Score:2)
Serves 'em right, I thought.
VisiCalc sucks (Score:2)