Excel 2 wasn't pretty, but it was prettier than 1-2-3 – click to enlarge
Posted on 10/22/2024 10:16:20 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Microsoft Excel, the true successor to the throne of COBOL. Version 1.0 was released on the last day of September 1985, four decades ago.
Since the original US English version of Windows 1.0 went to manufacturing at the end of November that year, this means that the default spreadsheet for Microsoft Windows is itself older than Windows. (The European version of Windows didn't appear until May 1986, but that doesn't really matter, nobody cared about it either.)
Excel 2 wasn't pretty, but it was prettier than 1-2-3 – click to enlarge
As the old joke goes, like an "incel", it still incorrectly assumes what constitutes a date, to the vexation of geneticists – and their eventual surrender.
Yes, Excel 1 was a Mac application, and originally a Mac-only application. The first Windows version only followed a few years later, when in 1987 Microsoft ported Excel 2 to Windows.
The tender, greenhorn Reg FOSS desk supported it for multiple customers on Windows 2. Even though Windows 2 itself was a bit of a joke, Excel was a compelling enough app that customers tolerated it just to get a graphical spreadsheet, and it even shipped with a copy of Runtime Windows, a special, heavily cut-down version of Windows 2 with no shell, which let you execute a Windows application from DOS. It loaded enough of Windows to start the app as the sole UI, and when you quit the app, it exited back to DOS again.
Experience the raw power of two files at once, side by side – click to enlarge
Excel didn't pioneer the market. Spreadsheets have been the key tool of the microcomputer industry for pretty much as long as there has been a microcomputer industry. Arguably, the first one was VisiCalc, which is the app that made Apple's initial fortune by selling an awful lot of Apple II computers. According to Steve Jobs, anyway. (Yes, we did slightly miss Spreadsheet Day. Feel free to complain in the comments.)
Then came IBM's PC, imitating one key element of the Apple II by incorporating lots of internal expansion slots, and thus inspiring a famous Apple advertisement.
Apple Wall Street Journal advertisement – click to enlarge
There was a version of VisiCalc for the new IBM operating system, MS-DOS 1.0, and thanks to co-creator Dan Bricklin you can download it for free, all 27 KB of it. It didn't take full advantage of the machine's hardware, though, and remained nearly as limited as its eight-bit Apple forebear.
That opening was exploited by Lotus with 1-2-3, which, if you're determined enough, you can run under DOSBox. Or, of course, thanks to Tavis Ormandy, run it natively on Linux instead. For its time, it was very powerful. The name came from the way it integrated number-crunching, extremely basic database facilities (you could define ranges and search or sort), and graphing.
It also bypassed MS-DOS and hit the metal of the IBM PC directly for better performance. That had multiple side effects. As well as selling a lot of IBM PCs, 1-2-3's stringent compatibility requirements also led to the creation and flourishing of the clone industry. And, thrown in, the Lotus-Intel-Microsoft specification for Expanded Memory – the only way to access more than 640 KB from MS-DOS on the early 8088 and 8086 PCs.
A brief play with 1-2-3 for DOS – or Linux – will effectively demonstrate why Excel rapidly displaced it. Excel was dramatically easier to understand and use, and although there were other graphical spreadsheet programs out there – you can still buy Quattro Pro – Excel got in early and established its dominance. Forty years later, Excel formulas effectively constitute the world's most widely used programming language.
IBM discontinued Smartsuite a decade ago, including the final release of 1-2-3 for Windows. Like WordPerfect, after a rocky start (and the wasted effort of OS/2 versions), it developed into a perfectly serviceable Windows app… but too little, too late.
Downloadable CD images can be found in a few places out there, and in response to a reader query, we tried it a couple of years ago and it installs and runs fine on Windows 11, except for online help.
Lotus also had a far more radical spreadsheet, the multidimensional Improv, billed as Spreadsheets Done Right. It started out on the NeXT Computer, then was successfully translated to Windows… where it flopped. I evaluated version 1.0 for Windows for my then employer, and it was a vision of a smarter future – but if you already knew how to navigate the conventional 1970s-style rectangular grid of cells, it was too late. The mental damage was already done.
Excel, meanwhile, will still cost you a few hundred bucks, of course. That may be the best tribute to its staying power. ®
I made a movie about the 029 Keypunch back in the day. Came out of college in ‘67 and worked in COBOL at American Oil. Still remember seeing card trays in the street gutters when they’d fall off the cart in the rain and be jammed back together and then run on the computer anyway. Then with the Systems Development group at the U of Chicago Computation Center. Later, when I got into computer language design, I had Captain Grace Hopper speak at one of my meetings. She was one of the COBOL inventors. Adored her. I was on the board for Jean Sammet’s History of Computer Languages conference. She was another big COBOL name and a Trekkie like me!
As for FORTRAN, I was making a movie that included John Backus, one of the inventors of FORTRAN, and took B-roll footage crawling around on the floor during one of his group meetings. Adorable man. Husband created a Reduction Language based on John’s reduction languages.
John Backus Group Meeting - IBM Research - 5 July 1989
https://youtu.be/KzBkb-bvNK4
Husband’s paper on Yet Another ALGOL Compiler came out in 1965. He worked on the old MANIAC machine and the 7040. We had punched card trays and one day turnaround. One of the women was an artist and illustrated the tops of the card trays with Medieval Illustrations. Gorgeous. I used that later in my movie. Desperately trying to get husband to record his computer history memories.
This is footage from a Common Lisp Standards Meeting with some of the really big names. I was Secretary of the Group.
X3J13 Common Lisp - Jun 1989 - San Jose - Joseph Blanchard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvU3pJbZBj0
One of the favorite movies I made was about the work of John Cocke, an eccentric and beloved IBM Researcher. He was still terribly ill and everyone wanted to let him know how much they cared about him. Alternated funny stories with the history of his inventions. Husband was asked to follow him around and write papers on his thoughts but refused as he had his own research he wanted to do. Everyone who followed John became famous.
Computer History - John Cocke: A Retrospective by Friends - 1990
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYwd30iWVvw
My Visicalc 1982
It doesn’t seem that long ago when I switched from Lotus 1-2-3 to Excel.
I remember building some seriously cool macros in LOTUS 1-2-3, to make my weekly sales reports for our insurance agency compile and print with just a couple keystrokes. The computer for the entire office was kept in a locked room, and we had to sign up to reserve usage, and get the key from the executive secretary.
I used Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3, and Quattro Pro, before Excel.
I preferred Lotus Improv, but didn’t get to spend too much time with the NeXT Workstation.
It was kind of amazing what you could do with 48k of RAM.
I spent about three years learning 1-2-3. I resisted Excel…until all of our budgeting went on it.
But I am not a day over 30….
“I had a lot of trouble with my Apple floppy drive.”
We had two in our office
Drives were always troublesome
We had to do one project on cards when I was in college. No thanks.
It was kind of a rite of passage for the CS students. Everyone walking around with their little trays for two weeks.
I used Lotus 1-2-3, and Quattro Pro long before Excel. Both were far superior IMO. But Microsoft started installing Excel with any new computer with Windows and corporate America forced everyone to move to the cheaper alternative. We had to convert all our 123 spreadsheets over, but there were things Excel just couldn’t do.
I was the office Lotus 123 master. I made a few bucks on the side converting Lotus files to Excel.
I bought the very first Apple SE30 for a major oil company to do a project with Excel about 1987 or so. To get it I had to appear before the regional VP to explain why we needed it. I had been to an Oracle class and attempted to use that but it just was not up to par for what we wanted to accomplish. The SE30 was a luggable computer, certainly not a portable or laptop. I think the 30 was for the weight in lbs but it seemed like kilos sometimes.
” We had to convert all our 123 spreadsheets over, but there were things Excel just couldn’t do.”
Excel was far superior. I saw nothing that 1-2-3 could do that Excel couldn’t do.
What did you find?
I called my first business Windows of Opportunity in the days of Excel 2.0 By the second year it was EXCELerate Consulting where I did XLM and then VBA programming. I still have a client from 1993. For some years I supported our family through Excel consulting contracts.
My first spreadsheet program was PeachTree which ran on z-DOS.
Old? Ha!
Switches and hand-assembled machine language.
Audio cassette tapes, digital cassette tapes.
8” hard- and soft-sectored floppies.
5” hard- and soft-sectored floppies.
3.5” floppies.
ZIP drives
Tandon removable drives
Hewlett-Packard Basic - Dandy for instruments and test equipment with the HPIB lashup.
But the worst one?
Baby sister has grandkids, and they’re going to be popping great-grands within the next 5 years. I used to change her diapers. I think she does it on purpose to make me feel old.
No kidding. In the ‘97 version of Excel, there was an “Easter Egg” flight simulator. To access it, you would put a certain code in a specific cell and hit a certain function. The screen would flicker and then you could fly a little squat “plane” over mountains. It was cool at the time I suppose. CBNS
I had a brown bag version of 1-2-3, ran on a 640k DOS machine. Once I realized I could import specific cells from one spreadsheet to a location in a separate spreadsheet I became a mad woman and would get lost for hours. Those were the good old days.
Ah, rich guy, YOU had punch cards and not just paper tape!
Haha...me too...at Blue Cross...and I ran a telegraph machine occasionally too.
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