Anthony J. Pennings, PhD

WRITINGS ON DIGITAL ECONOMICS, ENERGY STRATEGIES, AND GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS

VisiCalc and the Rise of the PC Spreadsheet

The big computer mainframes of the 1960s and even the minicomputers of the time were not accessible enough to provide the type of direct experience needed to play with the numbers by making multiple changes and producing various scenarios that would make the spreadsheets so valuable later on. It was the microprocessor-enabled PCs that made possible the successive lineage of major digital spreadsheet applications – VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, Microsoft’s Excel, and Google Sheets that transformed modern organizational practices.

A First Pre-VisiCalc Attempt at Electronic Spreadsheets

Computerized spreadsheets were conceived in the early 1960s when Richard Mattessich at the University of California at Berkeley conceptualized the electronic simulation of business accounting techniques in his Simulation of the Firm through a Budget Computer Program (1964). Mattessich envisaged the use of “accounting matrices” to provide a rectangular array of bookkeeping figures that would […]

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  • About Me

    Professor at State University of New York (SUNY) Korea since 2016. Moved to Austin, Texas in August 2012 to join the Digital Media Management program at St. Edwards University. Spent the previous decade on the faculty at New York University teaching and researching information systems, digital economics, and strategic communications.

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    apennings70@gmail.com
    anthony.pennings@sunykorea.ac.kr

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    The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of my employers, past or present.