I am indebted to The Register for reminding me that Lotus 1-2-3 was launched exactly 30 years ago on 26th Jan 1983. I know there were spreadsheets before – like Visicalc on the Apple 11 which had been developed by Lotus founder Mitch Kapor – but it was Lotus 1-2-3 that was game-changing. IBM had only recently launched their PC with the help of Bill Gates’ Microsoft. But what did you do with the PC other than word processing? Lotus 1-2-3 was the perfect bit of software that turned the PC into a tool that every business (and businessman/woman) had to have. Business plans would never be the same again!
Lotus could have conquered the world. But just like so many pioneers it just laid the groundwork for others to build upon. My first spreadsheet experience came with Multiplan from Microsoft on the Mac in 1984. This quickly morphed into Excel for Windows 2 in 1987. The rest, I guess, is history!
Poor Lotus was beset with technical problems trying to port its software to ever changing environments. Its Lotus Symphony integrated package, launched in 1984, never really took off but its roots can still be seen in Lotus Notes (does anyone have a good word to say for it?). Lotus was sold to IBM in 1995 for $3.5b (so hardly a failure!)
It’s a good object lesson in the changing fortunes of the tech sector. Read more in The Register’s interview with Mitch Kapor.