Father of the PC spreadsheet turns 60

Written by Historian

Saturday, 16 July 2011

Dan Bricklin, co-creator of Visicalc the first spreadsheet for the personal computer, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, on July 16, 1951.

VisiCalc helped to make the Apple, for which it was initially written, a success and also has a big impact on the IBM PC as people bought personal computers simply to run VisiCalc.

It was Bricklin's partner in Software Arts, Bob Frankston, who gave VisiCalc its name. Bricklin's suggestion for the application that he devised was "Calcu-Ledger", which while not as good a product name was a fairly accurate description of what his program does.

DanBricklin

Dan Bricklin, born July 16, 1951

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

For more see:

Dan Bricklin - inventor of the PC spreadsheet

Gene Amdahl

For computer people of a certain age Gene Amdahl is a legend and a hero who made logic design cool and out did IBM in building advanced computers. IBM may have had the 360 and the 370 but Amdahl built [ ... ]

+ Full Story

William Shockley and Solid State Electronics

Computers need suitable components to be developed before they can be built. It was the invention of the transistor that led to California's Silicon Valley became a hotbed of electronics innovati [ ... ]

+ Full Story