Put yourself in the situation. You’re hunched over your desk in the company’s accounting department, your elbows buried in a fluffy sheet of paper, staring at the calendar on the wall. There, the double is marked with a red circle – hell red, you think – the cause of all your diseases: five days left, five days left, and this is counting down the weekend so you have to hand over all the extra expenses of the staff to your boss, 250 eager souls who seem determined to sink you even deeper, shoulder to shoulder for days, among overdue bills.

“To hell,” you say to yourself. To avoid making a mistake like other times, you take a calculator, a pen, a diary, and a metal ruler, and decide to keep your tabs down for the next eight hours.

— Hey, I heard there is a software called VisiCalc that might interest you.

The voice is the voice of your colleague from Human Resources. You can tell by the tone because frankly you didn’t understand most of what he was saying. This December 1979 and to be honest, you hardly know what software is. And no, you have no idea what VisiCalc is.

It won’t take long to find out.

You and tens of thousands of executives will see the skies light up in the next few years thanks to their spreadsheets with the help of Apple II computers.

meteoric rise, meteoric fall

Today we are not used to working with spreadsheets on our computers and getting along with Excel. in and out of business. We use it to prepare programs, distribute tasks, calculate expenses, write invoices… There are even those who make art with it for possession.

It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when offices had no choice but to use calculators and diaries. If you’ve gotten to countless calculations and found that you’ve added incorrect data to the second box or just found it’s getting old, you had no choice but to arm yourself with patience, retrace your steps and check all your calculations.

Today we enjoy the blessed magic of Excel to make our work more bearable; but long before Microsoft spreadsheets and even Lotus 1-2-3, there was a program that paved the way: VisiCalcabbreviation visible Y calculator. The most curious thing is that VisiCorp’s software does not only help those who have to deal with heavy and mechanical calculations. It also contributed to the popularization of personal computers and especially to the success of the Apple II.

Its history is relatively simple and somehow advances the chronicles of success and crash in the industry since then. Around 1978, Dan Bricklin, a student at Harvard, set about creating an electronic tool to help with the most cumbersome computational tasks. The idea was not entirely new, and some steps had been taken in that direction before it in the 1960s. What he was totally right about was how he proposed the solution with a program that would later help his colleague Bob Frankston develop it. MYTH.

In addition to business management, Bricklin had a technical background and cumbersome computing applications It was used in the central computers of large companies. Its purpose was to simplify it, to obtain a resource that would not require redoing all the work in case of an error or change. Not only that. He also wanted a tool that could be accessed by personal computers, providing assistance in homes and small businesses.

By 1979 the couple had already set up their own company, and months later they began marketing the result, VisiCalc. Program – remember History Computer– started selling end of that year for about a hundred dollars and it was an immediate success; So much so that many distributors have decided to offer this new software to the Apple II, which greatly simplifies the management of accounts and spreadsheets. The first VisiCalc prototype, though still with very limited functionality, was originally tested on an Apple II using Apple Integer Basic.

Partly because of its appeal and the enormous benefit that can be derived from it in the office, VisiCalc has helped personal computers enter the business world strongly. By 1982 its price had already skyrocketed to $250, and within six years it was able to sell. over 700,000 copies. While his success has encouraged other companies to follow in his footsteps, VisiCalc has managed to keep the brand’s appeal as the main reference… At least for a while.

In 1983, the company had to face a new competitor: Lotus 1-2-3, a tool deliberately similar to VisiCalc but with far more advantages than PCs. Using the advantages of an already known product with good penetration, combining them with significant improvements, double bet was well received and soon after, VisiCalc was replaced by 1-2-3. Despite announcing a release for the IBM PC in 1984, its sales fell off the cliff and in 1985 the company switched to Lotus Development. There were no more chapters left in the VisiCalc story.

In total it is estimated that it has been sold so far. one million copies From VisiCalc. Competition brought it to the fore and broke its dominant position, but that doesn’t mean it was the hero of an important chapter in computer history and paved the way for later programs, including Excel. It reached a version for the Macintosh by the mid-1980s.

Pictures | Dave Winer (Flickr), Marcin Wichary (Flickr), and Gortu (Wikipedia)