Visicalc

Poll without page-refresh

Article on other languages:

	del.icio.us
	Digg
	Furl
	Reddit
	Rojo
	Add to OnlyWire


An example VisiCalc spreadsheet on an Apple II.
Developed by	VisiCorp
Latest release	VisiCalc Advanced Version / 1983
OS	Apple II, CP/M, Atari 8-bit family, Commodore PET, DOS
Type	Spreadsheet
License	Proprietary EULA
Website	www.danbricklin.com

VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program available for personal computers. It may well be the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool.^[1] VisiCalc sold over 700,000 copies in six years.^[2]

1 Origins
2 Successors
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

Origins

Conceived by Dan Bricklin, refined by Bob Frankston, developed by their company Software Arts^[1], and distributed by Personal Software in 1979 (later named VisiCorp) for the Apple II computer, it propelled the Apple from being a hobbyist's toy to being a much-desired, useful financial tool for business^[1]. At the time, most microcomputers suffered from lack of storage space and display limitations that made them poor competitors in the word processing and database markets.^{[citation needed]} The spreadsheet, however, did not depend on powerful displays or storage media, and so was an ideal fit for microcomputer technology available at the time.^{[citation needed]} This likely motivated IBM to enter the PC market which they had been ignoring until then. After the Apple II version, VisiCalc was also released for the Atari 8-bit family, the Commodore PET, TRS-80, and the IBM PC^[1].

According to Bricklin, he was watching his university professor at Harvard Business School create a financial model on a blackboard. When the professor found an error or wanted to change a parameter, he had to tediously erase and rewrite a number of sequential entries in the table, triggering Bricklin to realize that he could replicate the process on a computer using an "electronic spreadsheet" to view results of underlying formulae^[3].

Successors

Charles Babcock of InformationWeek argues that in perspective, “VisiCalc was flawed and clunky, and couldn't do many things users wanted it to do.”^[4] Soon, more powerful clones of VisiCalc were released, including SuperCalc (1980), Lotus 1-2-3 (1981), Microsoft's MultiPlan (1982), and the spreadsheet module in AppleWorks (1984). With Microsoft Excel (introduced for the Macintosh in 1985 and for Windows 2.0 in 1987), a new generation of spreadsheets was born. Due to the lack of a patent, none of the developers of the VisiCalc clones had to pay any royalties to VisiCorp.

The idea was prominent enough that an entire spreadsheet was shipped as C source code as a mere application "sample" of Borland's Turbo C compiler: the TurboCalc.