![]() ![]() The development and deployment of these systems would likely have taken years longer if the corporate world didn’t gain access to relatively inexpensive PCs and spreadsheet software. ![]() Spreadsheets were also the tools that helped teach a generation of developers and statistical analysts how to write complex macros and mathematical algorithms that drive today’s globally interconnected financial markets and trading systems. Countless millions of copies of popular spreadsheet programs-including VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, SuperCalc and, later, Microsoft Excel and Borland’s Quattro Pro-were sold during these years, putting fairly sophisticated financial and statistical modeling tools into the hands of people who a few years earlier probably had no idea what a spreadsheet was. The early spreadsheet market was built by a combination of shrewd entrepreneurs and brilliant technologists, including Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs of Lotus Development, Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston of VisiCalc, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Philippe Kahn of Borland Software.Īlong with email, spreadsheet software was the application that most helped justify corporate deployment of PCs in huge numbers during the 1980s. Like the growth of the PC market itself, the story about how spreadsheets became a critical computer business tool is about the rapid rise and fall of companies that were once household names. The story about the evolution of the PC spreadsheet was not a dry technical narrative. PC Week, the predecessor of today’s eWEEK, closely followed the astounding growth in the use of PCs and spreadsheets in the 1980s. PC spreadsheet software brought about a fundamental change in the way that the corporate number crunchers-the accountants, financial analysts, stock traders and marketing managers-got access to the computing power they needed to do their jobs. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |