Computing’s first ‘killer app’ changed everything

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Getty Images

Image caption

Dan Bricklin, inventor of the first computer spreadsheet

In 1978, a Harvard Business School student named Dan Bricklin was sitting in a classroom, watching his accounting lecturer filling in rows and columns on the blackboard. Image copyright
IBM/1979 Software Arts, Inc

Other financial and accounting programs had long existed but VisiCalc was the first with the modern spreadsheet interface. Image caption

Technology has transformed the jobs of New York Stock Exchange traders such as Lauren Simmons

In the age of the spreadsheet, the repetitive, routine parts of accountancy disappeared.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk