Prior to electronic spreadsheets calculations were done with
pencil and paper, perhaps also using a slide rule, or if one had access to it,
an adding machine. Prior to the use of
computers and spreadsheet technology one can only imagine the manual math
calculations that allowed Neil Armstrong to walk on the moon and return to
earth in 1969, much less to run large city hospitals efficiently. There were no
electronic communication or barcode systems to keep up with inventory supply
and demand needs in healthcare settings.
Electronic spreadsheets originated with Richard Mattessich
in 1961. Mattessich, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley,
developed the concept for business accounting
(Mattessich, n.d.). His research served as a foundation for
microcomputer spreadsheet programs, such as VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3, developed
in the late 1970’s and 1980’s. In 1978,
Dan Bricklin, a graduate student at Harvard Business School, developed a
spreadsheet prototype for VisiCalc for a case study report. After designing the prototype, Bricklin
engaged the assistance of Bob Frankston, a graduate from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) with computer science graduate degrees, to create
the production code (Bellis, 2012; Fleming,
1997; Frankston, 2012). Later
Bricklin and Frankston created a business to market their VisiCalc product.
During 1970’s and 1980’s personal computer (PC) science
continued to develop. In 1983, the Lotus
Development Corporation released Lotus 1-2-3, a precursor to the many
spreadsheet software products we use today.
The founders of Lotus 1-2-3 were Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs (High Tech History, 2010). Kapor had left
VisiCalc and Sachs had worked with a company that created spreadsheet software
for Data General. The popularity of
Lotus 1-2-3 was highest in the 1980’s, but it ebbed sharply in 1988 a year
after the release of Excel. Soon afterwards, other competitors began to develop
other spreadsheet software applications.
IBM bought Lotus 1-2-3 in 1995.
Lotus 1-2-3 is still available as a commercial product from IBM.
The first iteration of Microsoft Excel was called Multiplan
and released in 1982. Multiplan was
redesigned to accommodate additional operating systems and renamed Excel when
first released for the Mac in 1985 (Haresoftware,
2008; Peter, 2010; Power, 2004).
Microsoft Excel was released for Windows PCs in 1987 with the sales
promotion of “doing everything Lotus 1-2-3 does and better.” By 1988, Excel was outselling Lotus
1-2-3. Excel was the first software that
allowed the user to customize the spreadsheet using fonts, character
attributes, and cell appearance. It
offered auto-calculating and provided the graphical capabilities that are still
popular today.
It was not until 2008 that iWork Numbers, the Apple
spreadsheet app, was released. Numbers
was a part of the iWork office suite (Apple,
2007). iWork Numbers is now a competitor with Microsoft Excel because of
the introduction of the flexible canvas
concept that allows a user to arrange more than one spreadsheet and chart in a
single layout. Numbers also introduced the contextual
format bar, which hides the column letters and row numbers unless the
spreadsheet is edited. Apple released
iWork Numbers as a mobile app with the introduction of the iPad in 2010.
Today, there are numerous spreadsheet applications available
for a variety of platforms. Standalone
programs are available for desktop, laptop, and mobile computers, such as the
iPhone, iPad, and Android phone. Online
cloud spreadsheet software is available for any of the multiple platforms that
allow for Internet access.
References
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