Tina Norris Fields
tinanfields at torchlake.com
Sat Mar 2 11:31:52 CST 2013
I love it, and I hope it is true! T Tina Norris Fields tinanfields-at-torchlake-dot-com 231-322-2787 On 3/2/2013 10:24 AM, Brad Marks wrote: > All, > > Back in the 1980s and 1990s I attended a number of IBM DB2 User Conferences. > > At each conference they would have a few "non technical" presentations. > > I remember one such presentation where the speaker talked about the history of software. Here is what I recall regarding Visicalc. > > Two college roommates (might have been at MIT, I can't remember for sure) liked to go out drinking beer and chasing girls. One was an accounting major and the other CS (or whatever they called CS back then). > > During one semester, the guy with the accounting major had many assignments that required many spreadsheets (done with paper and pencil back then). This took a very long time and was very frustrating work. But even worse, he was not able to go out drinking and chasing girls very often. > > His roommate (the computer guy) said that he would write a "Visual Calculator" for his friend in order to free up some of his time. This "Visual Calculator" evolved into VisiCalc. Which gave birth to the whole realm of computer-based spreadsheets such as Excel. > > I am not sure if this is a true story or not, but it is surely worth repeating :-) > > Probably there are many innovative ideas that were tied to beer drinking and/or carnal desires in some fashion. > > Brad > > > -----Original Message----- > From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com on behalf of Gustav Brock > Sent: Sat 3/2/2013 8:01 AM > To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com > Subject: Re: [AccessD] I was not going to post this > > Hi John > > Right, and before that it was Visicalc which was the first application that, to me on the PET computer, showed real business power other than text processing. > > /gustav > > > >