The first electronic spread sheet with 'instant update' capabilities was VisiCalc. It was written for the Apple II in 1979 or 1980. The authors had trouble explaining what it was or did - even accountants were accustomed to spread sheets on paper that were stable. But at $400 in 1980 dollars plus $2000 for hardware, small company managers snapped it up, helping propel Apple into the big time. I used it to do my department budget dev't for a large company as well.
My eighth grade son did a designed experiment for his Science Project with VisiCalc. You should have seen his eyes light up when he realized that he too could understand and do the calculations at home on our own machine. But he had to draw the graphs himself. Life is so hard. What made VisiCalc valuable was the instant update feature. Nobody expected an 8 bit machine to have 16 place precision. Excel is better than VisiCalc. So is the machinery used. We also expect more of Excel. Can we get it? cheers, Jay Gaj Vidmar wrote: > [snip] I am even convinced that apart from the > Internet, spreadsheets are the most revolutionairy contribution of computers > to the ways of information processing, [more snip] -- Jay Warner Principal Scientist Warner Consulting, Inc. 4444 North Green Bay Road Racine, WI 53404-1216 USA Ph: (262) 634-9100 FAX: (262) 681-1133 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.a2q.com The A2Q Method (tm) -- What do you want to improve today? . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
