Want to feel old? Excel just entered its 40th year
Microsoft Excel, launched on September 30, 1985, celebrates 40 years of evolution, maintaining dominance in data management and analysis with its user-friendly design and extensive formula capabilities.
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Microsoft Excel has recently marked its 40th anniversary, having been first released on September 30, 1985. Notably, Excel predates the Windows operating system, with its first version for Windows appearing in 1987. Initially launched as a Mac application, Excel quickly gained traction and became a dominant spreadsheet tool, surpassing competitors like Lotus 1-2-3. Over the years, Excel has evolved significantly, becoming a staple in both personal and professional settings, and is often regarded as the world's most widely used programming language due to its extensive formula capabilities. Despite the emergence of various alternatives, Excel's user-friendly interface and powerful features have solidified its position in the market. The software continues to be a key player in data management and analysis, reflecting its enduring relevance in the tech landscape.
- Excel was first released on September 30, 1985, making it 40 years old.
- It was initially a Mac application before being ported to Windows in 1987.
- Excel has maintained dominance over competitors like Lotus 1-2-3 due to its user-friendly design.
- The software is considered the world's most widely used programming language due to its formula capabilities.
- Excel remains a crucial tool for data management and analysis in various sectors.
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7 commentsAlso a technical achievement for the history books (in the DOS era, Lotus 1-2-3 truly pushed the envelope and was the reason for early 'extended memory' standards, but on both Mac and Windows, Excel truly shined, allowing much larger sheets than were possible before, despite the meager hardware resources available).
Also, a true source of feature innovation. 'Autofill', first seen in 1992, was possibly the first 'AI' (and yeah I know), and even the features that were absolutely useless (like the ability to modify sheet values by manipulating a graph, introduced in Office 95, which I remember demo-ing to great applause during the European intro tour) made a mark, as did the UI.
Of all the current 'Office'-style apps, Excel is the only one that is probably still irreplaceable for me. And yeah, I know, it messes up CSV imports by default, which has reportedly set back DNA research by hundreds of years, but that's just a matter of teaching future scientists to use Data/From Text-or-CSV as intended, and will thus sort itself out within the lifetime of this very useful product...
There is hardly anything useful you can do with computers that you can't do in Excel. Spreadsheets are a higher level abstraction to computation itself.
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