Template:VisiCalc capsule: Difference between revisions
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) Created page with "{{drop|I|n 1979, Dan}} Bricklin and Bob Frankston created a new application for the Apple II computer. They called it “VisiCalc”. It was a grid of cells that you could input numbers and text into and then run calculations on by reference to cell coordinates. VisiCalc was, of course, the first spreadsheet program. It is the primordial ancestor of that beast we all now know and love as Microsoft Excel. The brilliant innovation was to separate the..." Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit Advanced mobile edit |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{drop|I|n 1979, Dan}} Bricklin and Bob Frankston created a new application for the Apple II computer. They called it “[[VisiCalc]]”. It was a grid of cells that you could input numbers and text into and then run calculations on by reference to cell coordinates. [[VisiCalc]] was | {{drop|I|n 1979, Dan}} Bricklin and Bob Frankston created a new application for the Apple II computer. They called it “[[VisiCalc]]”. It was a grid of cells that you could input numbers and text into and then run calculations on by reference to cell coordinates. [[VisiCalc]] was the first [[spreadsheet]] program: a primitive ancestor to that beast we all now know and love as [[Microsoft Excel]]. [[VisiCalc]]’s brilliant innovation was to separate the data you wanted to run operations on — the numbers and text ''in'' the cells — from the operations themselves, which referenced the just cell coordinates, not the data inside the cell. You could therefore change the data without changing the calculation operations. Excel was a rudimentary form of programming language. | ||
It might not have seemed much in 1979, but it would revolutionise business computing. While not nearly as intuitive as the “desktop” — there was no graphic user interface or anything like that — VisiCalc was a much purer expression of what a personal computer could do. It promised even modest undertakings a powerful means of storing, augmenting, filtering, analysing and manipulating unprecedented amounts of information as structured data. | It might not have seemed much in 1979, but it would revolutionise business computing. While not nearly as intuitive as the “desktop” — there was no graphic user interface or anything like that — VisiCalc was a much purer expression of what a personal computer could do. It promised even modest undertakings a powerful means of storing, augmenting, filtering, analysing and manipulating unprecedented amounts of information as structured data. | ||
Revision as of 11:52, 29 September 2024
In 1979, Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston created a new application for the Apple II computer. They called it “VisiCalc”. It was a grid of cells that you could input numbers and text into and then run calculations on by reference to cell coordinates. VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program: a primitive ancestor to that beast we all now know and love as Microsoft Excel. VisiCalc’s brilliant innovation was to separate the data you wanted to run operations on — the numbers and text in the cells — from the operations themselves, which referenced the just cell coordinates, not the data inside the cell. You could therefore change the data without changing the calculation operations. Excel was a rudimentary form of programming language.
It might not have seemed much in 1979, but it would revolutionise business computing. While not nearly as intuitive as the “desktop” — there was no graphic user interface or anything like that — VisiCalc was a much purer expression of what a personal computer could do. It promised even modest undertakings a powerful means of storing, augmenting, filtering, analysing and manipulating unprecedented amounts of information as structured data.