The boring rants of a lazy nerd

Friday, February 18, 2005

Tech History - spreadsheets

It's not-so-common knowledge these days (among my generation, at least) that the killer-application for personal computers (circa 1979) was VisiCalc - the first electronic spreadsheet. Its creator, Dan Bricklin, has a web page (he's a real pioneer blogger, in fact) on which he has a history section. It's very interesting, and it includes a reference manual and working version 1 software. Yes, actual working spreadsheet application for the IBM PC from 1981 (27K download), reportedly works out of the box on Windows. I confirm it does work on my machine (using dosemu) and I guess it should work in dosbox (if you're not on a PC-compatible).

No comments:

Blog Archive

About Me

GCS d- s-: a-- C++$ UL++ P+++ L+++ E--- W+++ N o? K? w++$ !O !M !V PS-(+) PE Y+ PGP+(-) t--@ 5++(+++) !X R-- tv-- b+>++ DI+++ D+ G e h! r* y--(-)>+++