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Meet the Guy Who Holds the Guinness World Record For Collecting Spreadsheets (fastcompany.com) 113

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
harrymcc writes: Ariel Fischman, a financial advisor in Mexico City, has been using spreadsheet software for 30 years. And in recent years he's been collecting it: VisiCalc, 1-2-3, Excel, Quattro, and lesser lights in their once-familiar boxes, in a dizzying array of variants stretching back to the 1970s. Last year, Guinness World Records certified that his collection is without peer. I recently spoke to him about it -- starting with the obvious question -- Why spreadsheets? -- for Fast Company.
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Meet the Guy Who Holds the Guinness World Record For Collecting Spreadsheets More

Meet the Guy Who Holds the Guinness World Record For Collecting Spreadsheets

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  • I had to collect them! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2019 @12:35PM (#58040918)

    Else they'd have spread!

  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2019 @12:37PM (#58040930)
    And I thought stamp collecting was the world's geekiest hobby, we have a new winner!

    • Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2019 @12:39PM (#58040936)

      Sadly, he'll have no one to leave this collection to when he passes on... since he's obviously going to die a virgin.

      • That, and I am sure that the EULA for most of the software forbids transfer of ownership.... ;)

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by umghhh ( 965931 )
        There must be something inherently problematic about computers as any hobby attached to it ends up in parent's cellar as a virgin while people collecting stamps got laid - my father was collecting too so I know. Maybe the amount of time the habit required was not as much as the pr0n/spreadsheets collection?
    • Geeky is manipulating numbers in interesting ways. Fucking mental is hoarding collections of numbers.

      Impressive, not even slightly.

      • Admit it, you're insanely jealous.

      • Re: Wow (Score:5, Informative)

        by amicusNYCL ( 1538833 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2019 @02:01PM (#58041428)

        The person who wrote this article does not know what a spreadsheet is. What he has collected is about 800 copies of various versions of applications that create spreadsheets.

        The person who wrote the article gets it correct once:

        Fischman collects spreadsheet software - boxes full of disks, manuals, and other accoutrements that were standard fare in every office until we started downloading most of our apps.

        It goes downhill from there:

        Why don’t we start with the most obvious question. Why spreadsheets?
        Once one sets out to collect spreadsheets, where does one get them?
        How many spreadsheets do you have?
        Is there such a thing as a valuable spreadsheet?
        VisiCalc, the PC spreadsheet that started it all.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Have you tried googling hthe author's name? Harry McCracken. Give it a try and you may be convinced he does know what he's talking about.

          • His article would tend to suggest otherwise. The terminology he is using does not make him sound intelligent.

            Are you the person the article is about? Do you refer to Microsoft Excel as a spreadsheet, or a program (or software)? It's not a spreadsheet, it is an application to produce spreadsheets. Powerpoint is not a slideshow, and Word is not a document. These are all programs, they are software.

            If you understand all of that, and I can't imagine that you wouldn't, then how did the questions that I quot

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        That's numberwang!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Do you know about the 1929 US Kansas-Nebraska overprint stamps? It was an experiment to overprint stamps with the name of the respective state to help combat thieves who would steal stamps in one state and sell them in another.

      Or about the various experiments with different adhesive types? You see,

      [fifty minutes of dullness about postage stamps omitted to save the brain cells of the readers]

      so I don't really know why you'd think stamp collecting is "geeky". I just don't see it at all.

    • Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dusthead Jr. ( 937949 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2019 @01:49PM (#58041368)
      You think spreadsheet software is the geekiest thing you can collect? What about Star Wars memorabilia? Video games and video game consoles. Playboy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mea2214 ( 935585 )
      Both take up less space than my beer can collection which I can't seem to part with.

  • He's not collecting spreadsheets (Score:5, Informative)

    by Patent Lover ( 779809 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2019 @12:38PM (#58040932)

    He's collecting spreadsheet software.

  • No mention of GEOS for the 64? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fat man's underwear ( 5713342 ) <tardeaulardeau@protonmail.com> on Tuesday January 29, 2019 @12:41PM (#58040950)

    Bringing a graphical spreadsheet with graphing capability on a 64 was a tour de force. Not mentioned in this article?

    Here's a weird little web page about it

    http://geowriter.blogspot.com/... [blogspot.com]

    • I was thinking along these lines as well. There was Syncalc for the Atari 800 system, and I'm sure many others that don't immediately come to mind. It's actually surprising that neither the Commodore or Atari systems were mentioned at all as they had their own cottage industries of business-like software.

  • enquiring minds want to know (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cellocgw ( 617879 ) <cellocgw&gmail,com> on Tuesday January 29, 2019 @12:54PM (#58041026) Journal

    So, which spreadsheet program does this guy use to organize and manage his collection?

    • Re:enquiring minds want to know (Score:5, Funny)

      by rjune ( 123157 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2019 @01:13PM (#58041160)

      He uses 3" x 5" cards.

    • Probably uses DBase III Plus

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      MS Access.
    • Yo dawg, I heard you like spreadsheets, so I tracked your spreadsheets with a spreadsheet you can use to spreadsheet while you spreadsheet.

    • In the article it says he prefers Excel for doing work - so I assume he uses that.

  • He doesn't always drink Beer but when he does he drinks Dos Equis!

  • You could then add Lotus Jazz. Underwhelming box, underwhelming product.

    But a retailer in my home town had the ultimate product box in the window for years, fading into violet obscuring - Modern Jazz.

    They got the box for display, but the product never shipped. that's a rare item.

  • People collect rocks, so why not spreadsheets?

  • It's mostly online only. Even if you can find a box with a cd or dvd in it, it probably requires online activation. I still have my games (and other things) from years-gone-by, and if I install them from the distribution disk they still work. How is anyone going to be able to do that with anything released in the past decade or so... modern games are going to be quickly forgotten.

    • How is anyone going to be able to do that with anything released in the past decade or so

      Good Old Games seems to do a pretty good job of it. GOG.com

  • I worked with someone like this once (Score:3)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2019 @02:10PM (#58041476) Homepage

    Spreadsheets...everywhere. Of all kinds, doing all kinds of evil. There are still some embedded because no one can figure out how they actually work or what the numbers actually mean, only that they need to compare new numbers against old numbers in one capacity or another.

    I drink a lot.

    • There are all kinds of uses for a modern spreadsheet program, even for an engineer -- producing tables and figures for reports, formulating budgets.

      My main use is for quick data visualization. Run a program in Eclipse that generates tab-separated numeric output, paste the numbers into Excel, select columns of data and view the resulting plot. The flexibility of such software saves having to write a GUI for every program that generates engineering data.

  • ... someone has to do it.

    • ... someone has to do it.

      No. Nobody had to do it. Nobody is harmed by him doing it, but nothing important would have been lost had he chosen not to do it. We still could have read about these older programs (by his own admission he doesn't run most of them, and many are likely inoperable due to the media they are on) and been just as well off. He does comment about how much he loves the documentation; likely the most useful thing he could do then would be to scan the documentation (and maybe the boxes as well) and post the sc

  • Kudos to him (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wired_parrot ( 768394 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2019 @02:17PM (#58041508)
    for preserving a slice of software history. Not only has he collected a rich historical collection preserving the evolution of spreadsheet software, but from the article he's also interviewed and corresponded with the software pioneers from the field, most of whom are in their 80s and 90s now, preserving their historical testimony. Without him an important part of software history might otherwise have been forgotten. I suspect his collection, and his research into the field, will be an invaluable archive for those interested in computing history. It's a shame that his interest in preserving software history is being met with more mockery than support by the slashdot community.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      it all started with the headline not being more accurate; had it been worded correctly (this is a *tech* site, after all) and pointed out it was software and not spreadsheets, the crowd in the nosebleed section would have been more forgiving and less mocking (one can only hope).

    • I concur with you entirely, but I think there is a snicker-and-giggle factor here for this guying specializing in collecting spreadsheet programs.

      John Trimmer self-published the book How to Avoid Huge Ships and every online reference to this rare book is filled with jokes. How do you avoid huge ships? Simple, don't cross their paths, and so on. Trimmer's book, however, was pitched towards the captains or operators of small vessels such as fishing boats and pleasure craft, who indeed give gray hairs to

    • Kudos to him for preserving a slice of software history. Not only has he collected a rich historical collection preserving the evolution of spreadsheet software, but from the article he's also interviewed and corresponded with the software pioneers from the field, most of whom are in their 80s and 90s now, preserving their historical testimony. Without him an important part of software history might otherwise have been forgotten. I suspect his collection, and his research into the field, will be an invaluab

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gwolf ( 26339 )

      Yes. FTR, I am the one of the two people that "certified" his collection for Guinness. And I know Ariel since we were both kids. When he first told me about this project of his, I just snickered. Until... Well, I started realizing he is really into it, and has nontrivial knowledge (operative, historical, social, even technical) about the evolution of such an important kind of software, instrumental for the universalizaiton of computer use in the office.
      Let me tell you, I spent eight hours counting boxes, fi

    • That's the spirit. But it's OK; not everyone needs to understand. Different strokes for different folks.

  • Boxed spreadsheet software (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2019 @02:56PM (#58041680) Homepage

    Ok, the Guinness World Records have become a bit ridiculous, registering records for some very trivial things, but at least this guy is not collecting "spreadsheets", but boxed spreadsheet software. He has over 500 according to the "strict" record parameters, or 800 otherwise.
    It's still rather trivial of course, when I was a kid (almost 3 decades ago), I had asked for the Guinness Book of records for christmas and enjoyed reading about the tallest man, the fastest animal etc, but the biggest spreadsheet software collection is nothing like that. I mean, you could have thousands of records under the category "biggest xx software collection", or things like "biggest kellogs cerial box collection" etc. Maybe I should also apply, I have the worlds biggest "software written by myself" software collection...

  • Unless he images that software to durable media like archival DVDs it can be lost as the floppies deteriorate. Lose one of a set and you're screwed.

    Back in the proverbial day we used Winimage which is (amazingly) still available. https://www.winimage.com/ [winimage.com]

    Of course Linux users have other options like dd.

    If you collect old software do yourself a favor and image it immediately so you'll have more than the packaging and a useless floppy in the future.

  • He made his shopping lists with them for 40 years, like most users.

  • Excel keeps adding features, not innovating. Too bad that Lotus didn't promote Improv or get it out sooner. Too bad that their 3D "page" model didn't prevail over Excel's very sloppy asynchronous sheet model. At least we're not still stuck with the ludicrous 64k row sheets that limited Excel for a decade too long. Excel's innovation was the ability to easily get pretty output. Products like Lucid3D and Javelin were the sources of real innovation. Too bad. And I agree with others here: too bad the article's

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