Spreadsheet History

Spreadsheet History

Information Technology

VET

IT Definition

• A computer program that allows the user to enter numbers and text into a table with rows and columns, and then maintain and manipulate those numbers using the table structure.

About this presentation

• Learn about

• How ‘accounting’ practices have evolved

• Use of technology in offices

• The development of office automation for managing data and processing information

• The killer application

• VisiCalc – the first ‘spreadsheet’.

Historical View

• Peple have, for hundreds of years kept records of some sort.

• Often called a ‘ledger’, these documents were arranged using rows, columns, horizontal and vertical lines with text and numbers written on them.

• Sales, Purchases, Stock, Billing – were all manually processed by ‘clerks’

Industrial Revolution!

• During the 1800s, the need to keep more and more records on a large scale grew.

• Initially, hand written by ‘clerks’.• Low ‘literacy’ levels for ‘ordinary people’ in the

1800s.• Mistakes in data entry.• Time to produce reports (turning data into

information) was slow.• Required many people to carry out and check

(validate) … (error checking).

The typing pool

• The introduction of the typewriter increased productivity, but clerical activities remained largely the same until the 1980s.

• Early computers did some degree of data processing – but still needed raw data to be collected manually.

The Need

• In 1978, Dan Bricklin, a student decided it would be great if he could turn his calculator into a kind of mouse, move it around and enter information into it.

• He used the ‘new’ Apple II computer, running BASIC to develop his idea into a computer program.

Innovation

• “Eventually, my vision became more realistic, and the heads-up display gave way to a normal screen. The mouse was replaced in the first prototype in the early fall of 1978 by the game paddle of the Apple ][. You could move the cursor left or right, and then push the "fire" button, and then turning the paddle would move the cursor up and down. The R-C circuit or whatever in the Apple ][ was too sluggish and my pointing to imprecise, so I switched to the two arrow keys of the Apple ][ keyboard (it only had 2) and used the space bar instead of the button to switch from horizontal movement to vertical.” … Dan Bricklin

The Killer App was born!

• Term originally coined to describe a computer program so good or so compelling to certain potential users that they buy the computer that the program runs on for no other reason than to be able to use that program.

• Killer applications are very rare. The most successful was VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet to run on a personal computer (the original Apple II microcomputer).

Resources

• A brief history of spreadsheets

• A comprehensive guide to spreadsheets