VisiCalc /vi'zi-calk/

application, tool, business, history The first spreadsheet

program, conceived in 1978 by Dan Bricklin, while he was an

MBA student at Harvard Business School. Inspired by a

demonstration given by Douglas Engelbart of a

point-and-click user interface, Bricklin set out to design

an application that would combine the intuitiveness of

pencil and paper calculations with the power of a

programmable pocket calculator.

Bricklin's design was based on the (paper) financial

spreadsheet, a kind of document already used in business

planning. (Some of Bricklin's notes for VisiCalc were

scribbled on the back of a spreadsheet pad.) VisiCalc was

probably not the first application to use a spreadsheet model,

but it did have a number of original features, all of which

continue to be fundamental to spreadsheet software. These

include point-and-type editing, range replication, and

formulas that update automatically with changes to other

cells.

VisiCalc is widely credited with creating the sudden demand

for desktop computers that helped fuel the microcomputer

boom of the early 1980s. Thousands of business people with

little or no technical expertise found that they could use

VisiCalc to create sophisticated financial programs. This

makes VisiCalc one of the first killer apps.

Dan Bricklin's Site .

(2003-07-05)