What was the first spreadsheet software

In January of , Lotus Development filed suit against Paperback Software and separately against Mosaic Software claiming they had infinged on the Lotus spreadsheet software. In a related matter, Software Arts, the developerof the original VisiCalc spreadsheet software filed a separate action against Lotus claiming that Lotus was an infringement of VisiCalc.

Briefly, Lotus won the legal battles, but lost the "market share war" to Microsoft. According to Russo and Nafziger "The Court granted Lotus' motion dismissing the Software Arts' action and confirming that Lotus had acquired all rights, including all claims, as part of the earlier transaction. Twin was designed to work like Lotus' and advertising proclaimed it "offers you so much more, for so muchless. Their visual displays were not however identical to or to each other.

The Court ruled that "[t]his particular expression of a menu structure is not essential to theelectronic spreadsheet idea, nor does it merge with the somewhat less abstract idea of a menu structure for an electronic spreadsheet Paperback Software Int'l, F. Dan has VisiCalc at his site. Bob Frankston is "pursuing a number of projects According to a Red Herring Profile , Mitch Kapor "gradually traded in his position as an entrepreneur searching for the next big technology idea for the long-term advisory role of angel investor".

Mitch's web site is Kapor Enterprises, Inc. Frontline Systems Inc. A solver add-in can be used for both equation-solving often called goalseeking and for constrained optimization using linear programming, nonlinear programming, and integer programming methods.

Bajarin, T. Browne, Christopher. Claymon, D. Henderson, T. Cobb, G. Spreadheet Software from VisiCalc to Indianapolis: Que Corp. Mattessich, Richard. Russo, J. Power uni. I found it more useful than the Apple version because it had graph plotting and statistical analysis in the same package. At the time, the HP plotter had just appeared so we could produce colour charts on paper or transparencies for presentation. The MIS folks were most disturbed because they could see the writing on the wall.

I can still remember the sad look on the manager's face when I showed him the colour plots. Our summer students would spend hours watching the plotter perform its stuff. Those were fun days. The Apple II also had good games, so there was another reason to buy it. But the first taste for many people was VisiCalc, and it helped them sell the machine, which provided the money that went into the development of the Macintosh.

It was a catalyst. Apple has been through a lot to get to where it is today. They had a soft spot for Apple. Not everyone is so complimentary about spreadsheets now. As the person responsible for bringing them into the world, do you ever get blowback from people who see spreadsheets as a byword for drudgery, or who consider them dangerously prone to errors? I honed it for uses I thought were good. On balance, I hope the spreadsheet has been good.

What it does prevent is you making addition and subtraction errors, which we did in the past. Personally speaking, that is just wonderful.

Not every day. I use them when I need to run numbers. What goes through your mind when you load up a spreadsheet these days? What advice do you have for developers trying to come up with the next killer app? We need both general-purpose and specific tools. This is how Steve Jobs thought about a lot of things—computers should be able to figure out things for you, rather than providing you with a general-purpose tool that you could figure out how to use on your own.

But by restricting what apps can do, and how they coordinate, they are slowly stripping [the general-purpose idea] away. How does the current euphoria rate? Is there a bubble? Speculation is always there, with intermittent reinforcement.

The things people say about the future sometimes turn out to be right, but the timing is wrong. In an interview [ in ], Nikola Tesla said something about a pocket computer that basically described FaceTime or Skype on a smartphone. Eventually, we got to it. I also love the story of Helen Greiner. She went on to co-found iRobot, whose products really can disarm bombs. I lucked out by being in the right place in the right time.

People bet on this, and some succeed. What ideas may sound crazy now but will someday become commonplace? Right now, we have people who are moving around when they work. A desktop computer is not appropriate for them.

Doctors, nurses, boiler repairmen… those people are not computerized in many ways. The smartphone and tablet are now light enough and powerful enough to replace paper. Spreadsheets are designed for heavy analysis. It was the spreadsheet utility that contributed to the skyrocket of the PC market that continued to thrive over the upcoming decades. Spreadsheet software on personal computers was a monumental moment for many. However, during the early 80s, computers were still command-line operating machines.

Spreadsheet programs such as SuperCalc , Multiplan and Lotus were advanced enough; they just lacked the user-friendly nature like many operating systems at the time. Then came along the graphical user interface GUI. This made handling programs such as spreadsheets much easier. Visual components replaced the text-dominated features across the entire software. This completely transformed the user-friendly nature of the spreadsheet and exponentially increased its use among home users.

Excel 1. Later on, they transitioned Excel to the Windows environment, and there was no looking back. Since then, Microsoft Excel has been the most dominant spreadsheet software over the last two decades. Although Microsoft Excel has remained the ultimate spreadsheet software even today, there remain several notable competitor spreadsheet applications on the market.

There have also been a number of non-proprietary, free, open-source alternative applications such as OpenOffice. Spreadsheets have come a long way over the past few decades, and they are continuing to become more intuitive, flexible and powerful than ever. In just the past few years, spreadsheet software now offers powerful analytical tools to turn data into useful insights.

The most notable is their visual representation, that now helps businesses project future developments for their companies. Moreover, cloud-based spreadsheets are now a key part of many organizations.