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Implementing VisiCalc

Posted by timothy on from the gnumeric's-great-grand-daddy dept.

David Leppik writes "The author of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, has an article about how it was designed. VisiCalc is why businesses started to take the Apple ][ (and personal computers in general) seriously. It also changed accounting forecasts forever, which triggered the investment boom that brought us the "greed is good" era. Oh, and you can still download VisiCalc in case you run DOS or Windows and have 27,520 bytes to spare."

10 of 305 comments (clear)

  1. Oh So He is to blame... by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 4, Funny
    I remember a realator telling me that the real-estate market didn't go loony until the creation of the spreadsheet.

    Before that all real-estate transactions needed to make sense on the back of an envelope.

    How many of you have run into dumb decisions by management that looked good in the spreadsheet?

    --
    "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
    --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
  2. Weird Al props... by H0NGK0NGPH00EY · · Score: 4, Funny

    Uh, uh, loggin' in now
    Wanna run wit my crew, hah?
    Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?
    They call me the king of the spreadsheets
    Got em all printed out on my bedsheets
    My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks
    But it was obsolete before I opened the box
    You say you've had your desktop for over a week?
    Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique!
    Your laptop is a month old? Well, that's great
    If you could use a nice, heavy paperweight.

    --
    Do not read this sig.
  3. Rock On! by Limburgher · · Score: 4, Funny
    Now all I need is Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and I'll be all set.

    What's that?

    It's WHAT century?

    Shit. Oh well. No Cholera for me. . .

    --

    You are not the customer.

  4. Leave this running by sirsampson · · Score: 4, Funny

    Set this running full screen on your machine and scare people away...

  5. Easter Egg? by charlieo88 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Okay, I downloaded it. Now how do I get to the flight simulator?

  6. yes I've 28k HD space but RAM requirements? by rlthomps-1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've only got 640k, I was told that's all I'd ever need.

  7. VisiCalc Trivia by jratcliffe · · Score: 4, Funny

    There's a nice little plaque at Harvard Biz School, in the classroom where Dan Bricklin first developed the VisiCalc idea (Aldrich 108). He came to my Managing Product Development class while I was at HBS, really cool guy. Tells a great story about doing a calculation in a very roundabout way, and then getting asked by the professor in class the next day "right answer, but why didn't you just use a ratio?" Dan said "well, this way will be more accurate." Truth of the matter was, he hadn't gotten the divide function working yet. :)

  8. VisiCalc by TheWickedKingJeremy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh, and you can still download VisiCalc in case you run DOS or Windows and have 27,520 bytes to spare.

    Oh yeah, let me just go ahead and break out my extra 50 gig hard drive I just happen to have sittin... did you say bytes?

    --

    my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
  9. code whore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    >B7:"Priceless
    >A7:"Never making a dime
    >B5:11000
    >A5:"Two Apple ]['s
    >B4:2000
    >A4:"Junk-food for programmers
    >B3:50000
    >A3:"Two Programers
    >A1:"Visi Calc: /W1 /GOC /GRA /GC9 /X>A1:>B7:

  10. Re:you can't beowulf outside of Linux by tx_mgm · · Score: 4, Funny

    90 minutes of cassette tape for one kilobyte of data

    good christ! what, did it record the voice of someone saying "one...zero....zero....one...one...one..." or what?

    --
    Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
    -Dr. Weird