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VisiCalc Turns 25, Creators Interviewed
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."
Run it yourself!
I bet there's a Linux one floating around out there, I guess I'll try to WINE this one.
Don't bother with that Software History website linked to in the article. There's very little content, and it seems to be mostly a placeholder and a place for people to give them donations.
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.
Comment of the year
Would they have ever written it, knowing that, in the end, a paper clip would be used to teach people how to use a spreadsheet.....
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
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.
Don't forget DB Master for the Apple II. Sold several million copies - a modernized version of it is still used in public works offices around the world, even 20 years later.
The original author still does DB work for this company.
I dont think the article mentioned this, but VisiCalc was also the first (known) enterprise app to be ported from the Apple OS to a *Nix based system.
Natural Selection: self-destruction of the poor and lazy
Well, not necessarily Visicalc specifically (Sheesh, it's an ancient program!), but spreadsheets in general.
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. The spreadsheet has no real-life corollary, whereas Java and specifically the Object Oriented paradigm model the real world to a T.
So if we want to congratulate Visicalc for anything, let's give them a big thanks for setting computers down a dead end road for 25 years.
Visicalc
;)
Mail-from: : SU-NET host SU-LOTS-A rcvd at 3-Jan-83 0246-PST
Date: : 3 Jan 1983 0246-PST
From: : K.Kanef at SU-LOTS-A (Bob Kanefsky)
Subject: : Visicalc
To: : Songs at SU-LOTS-A
Parody-of: : Physical (Olivia Newton John)
Visicalc
Parody written by Bob Kanefsky
Idea suggested by Judy Anderson
Been working out the figures day and night,
Making good column'ation.
I gotta add them up just right --
And know what they mean.
I pencil in the fields I \guess/ you want,
Adding and subtracting duly,
Movin' my eraser up and down and
Horizontally.
Let's get Visicalc,
Visicalc.
I wanna get Visicalc.
Lemme get your budget done,
Your budget done.
Lemme get your budget done,
(chorus)
I been patient, I been good.
Tryin' to make a hand-drawn table.
My interest in your figures wanes --
You know what I mean.
I'm sure you'll understand my point of view;
We know each other fiscally:
You gotta know you're gettin' up
My semi-annual fee.
(chorus)
(chorus)
Let's get annual,
Annual.
I wanna get annual.
Let's get into annual.
Lemme get your budget done,
Your budget done.
Lemme get your budget done,
(I know there was another version of this in an old Atari magazine that said something about "lemme see your diode's rock", but Google hasn't seen it.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Hmm, a program from 1975 is still better then Execl 2004
This signature was left intentionally blank.
I remember watching something about the early days of PC's and there was an interview with one of Visicalc's creators and he discussed the first time he showed it to an accountant.
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))
-- taking over the world, we are.
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?
Do you need a website upgrade?
It seems to work under Dosemu and Freedos (Dos emulation for Linux). WINE is overkill, since it doesn't use any Windows stuff.
Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
You mean to tell me that solitare was not the first killer app?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Heh... that must've been a common rewrite... I too did a "let's get visicalc", and even got it published in a computer magazine after being pushed onto Usenet somewhere. There's a reference to it in dejagoogle though.
Why would you expect it to work when its a DOS program? I thought WINE only re-implemented win32 calls..
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.. )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Boy, if they would have, it would have stopped alot of the anticompetitive business practices that's happened in the 25 years since, they could have locked out execl before it even happened.
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Most spreadsheets are overkill for most tasks.
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.
The spreadsheet only has no real-life corollary because Visicalc made doing it by hand completely and utterly obsolete. Writing a letter isn't really sped up a whole lot by using a computer (as compared to writing it by hand, or on a typewriter). Spreadsheets are a whole different story. They were done by hand at one point, but changing some numbers and carrying forward all the calculations used to be a full time job for some people. Now it's 10 seconds with Excel. Think on that for a bit. :)
I wonder what other software myths will fade or be debunked in the next twenty years.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
I didn't even realize it until I saw tihs article, but my first programming gig was with Visicalc...
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).
Bricklin and Frankston did some innovating work in (the quite stable) VisiCalc... not to be outdone, in 1982 Microsoft released Multiplan 1.0 which was a pioneer in some, shall we say, more infamous terms. It was a revenue bomb, and it's miscalculations cost customers umpteen $$. I remember hearing somewhere that the legal threats due to Multiplan almost shut down Microsoft's early operations.
Apparently, rumor was that SCO was hired to port Multiplan (to various *nix's I would guess).
Anyway, it's interesting that one of Microsoft's first attempt to unseat a software application was targeted at Visicalc. Did they succeed?
Sigs cause cancer.
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
In other news, Microsoft announced today that they have filed a patent application for a "spread-sheet," as evidenced by Excel 2003. They claim that the earlier art is irrelevant, as the test is whether people associate "spread-sheet" with Microsoft's current intellectual property. This stems from Microsoft's original "0s and 1s" patent, ripped off here from a story from The Onion.
Yes, the amount of time spent doing financial reports has pretty much stayed the same. But the ability to create scenarios, to play "what if" games, has led to much better financial information being available to corporate planners.
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.
NT
Hahaha, I thought the same. Go figure!
I seem to recall Control Data Corp (CDC) buying it from Bricklin, et all for several million and then CDC proceding to screw it up and had the advantage back to Microsoft.
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.
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
Users of Microsoft Excel are pretty accostumed to this one...
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
I thought it said ..."It's hard to believe that it's already been 25 years since the release of one of the world's first 'killer apes.'
I thought it was about King Kong!
I am anarch of all I survey.
Lotus Improv certainly sounds like something truly nifty (Google for it, there are a handful of articles about it on the web besides the one cited above). Which reminds me of Lotus Agenda, another reportedly supercool application that you can only read about today.
I wonder how many other revolutionary applications Lotus developed and later buried?
...one of your "fully-funtional spreadsheet in 2 lines of PERL" tricks?
;)
Surely you can duplicate VisiCalc with 1 or 2 lines, right?
...who reads the name "Software Arts" and thinks of the innocence it implies?
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.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
in a non-captialist society, we could work less. But since we are all wage slaves, we'll keep working all week.
I'll bet you a million dollars that there's at least one company, or even more likely a government agency, that still uses VisiCalc because they never had the motivation to update all their data.
What Would Jesus Do
(for a Klondike bar)?
AmiPro was consistently the best reviewed word processor, then Lotus bought it, destroyed the code base, and started over with WordPro. Which bit large.
AFAIK they didn't develop it, but they definitely buried it.
Basically, the goal of computing is to mimic and make easier real-life processes. The spreadsheet has no real-life corollary, whereas Java and specifically the Object Oriented paradigm model the real world to a T.
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 inefficient) for modelling certain classes of problem.
From: http://www.arkko.com/ioccc.htmlo urs/COMPLEMENTS/DOC/www.ioccc.org/2000/jarijyrki.c o 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
./jarijyrki sheet1.info
Size of source code: 1,536 bytes
Source: http://www.formation.jussieu.fr/ars/2000-2001/C/c
Makefile: http://www.formation.jussieu.fr/ars/2000-2001/C/c
Usage: make jarijyrki;
bash$
This is ridiculous. Everyone knows SCO invented the spreadsheet, these guys just ripped it off. It's impossible for mere individuals to make spreadsheet software -- it's far too complex an undertaking. You need hundreds of millions of dollars of R&D and that can only be provided by a reputable company like SCO.
Ken Brown of the ADTI will be releasing a ground breaking book soon, which will prove it!
How come Excel doesn't handle hexadecimal? Sheesh, I have to use calc.exe instead. Is there a decent free spreadsheet that is not so geek-challenged?
From the fawning respect dept: This is bar none the most important software ever created. I have kept a complete and pristine copy of a very early Apple version...it's the only software I felt was worth keeping along with my unopened bottle of Royal Wedding (chuck&di) preserve 25 year old Glen Grant single malt scotch. I'll probably open them both for my daugher's wedding :-)
"Its" is also a contraction for 'it is', for those of us that rarely proofread, and make typos often.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
are there any nice MS disses? Like "fsck Excel, we invented this crap"?
"/Dread"
BTW, a version of GEM still exists ... OpenGEM and GEMini.
-jh
Quoth the article:
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 in the synopsis.
That green slime had it coming.
I read this as, "VisiCalc Turns 25, creators interned."
Serves 'em right, I thought.
back in 1979, they knew how to use resources.
name 5 current (in the last year) massmailing viruses that are smaller then VisiCalc. are these viruses doing anything notably more complex then a simple speadsheet to justify the extra space? (i know its apples to pcs, er some other fruit, but even the OS VisiCalc ran on is smaller then some current viruses)
SuperCalc rules!
Proverbs 21:19
The parent post " Don't bother with that Software History website linked to in the article. There's very little content," is obvious a troll:
From the site http://www.bricklin.com/history/saiearly.htm
"VisiCalc was coded in assembler, first for the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor used in the Apple ][. The assembler Bob started with ran on the MIT Multics typesharing system. It was much less expensive to use it late at night than during the prime-time of day, so Bob slept during the day, waking up when I came over after classes in the later afternoon. He dialed in using a modem and a DEC LA-120 printing terminal like this one:"
* Someone in almost every article tries to make a completely off-topic reference to Clippy in order to get upmods.
* Clippy hasn't been in default installs in some four years now. I haven't seen him in almost six years.
* Clippy goes away when you right-click and go to "Hide." He never comes back.
Clippy, along with BSOD, is one of those jokes that will never die on Slashdot, because newbie Linux geeks like to think it's funny and relevant and still happens in this day and age. It's like people are stuck in 1998 and absolutely will not let go, because it's all they've got as they use their OpenOffice apps and that annoying, irritating light bulb pops up every 10 seconds whenever you type a few words...
"Sufferin' succotash."