Jack Crenshaw explores the really early days of computing, including the first computers and early spreadsheets:
As in college, a lot of our output in those days were graphs, and again a large part of our skill was our ability to plot microscopic dots at the right places on a piece of log-log paper, and then fair a smooth curve through them. Back in college, we tended to plot graphs with anywhere from three to seven points on them, but NASA needed much more accuracy. So a lot of our time went into calculating the data for the many points to be plotted. And that’s where I learned about spreadsheets.These were the original spreadsheets, of course — real sheets of 14″ x 17″ paper, ruled into rows and columns. What we did was to organize the “input” data into one or more columns. Each subsequent column involved operations on previous columns. If you’ve ever used Excel, I don’t have to explain further.
For simple problems with not too many entries, and for problems not needing great accuracy, we would use the good ol’ 18″ slide rule. For more complex problems, we would use the book of trig functions and the Friden.
For really long problems, we used Donna.
Donna was the department secretary, who doubled as a calculator operator. Donna supported some seven engineers, and had the patience of Job. She would sit there all day, day after day, crunching out those numbers, which we would then plot up and analyze. Donna prided herself on using 10-digit accuracy for everything, even if the input data was only good to three digits. If any errors were going to be introduced, it wasn’t going to be at her end.
One day I got a really big problem — one that seemed too big even for Donna to deal with, considering her other duties. I asked a colleague, “What do you do with problems that are too big for Donna?” He said, very matter of factly, “Oh, you take them to the Computer Room.”
You should have seen my eyes light up. I had been reading all about the “Giant Brains” — had even learned to program one in college, though I never saw it (the school didn’t actually own one). I couldn’t wait to see how the folks in the Computer Room dealt with my problem. Eagerly I got directions from my colleague, prepared my data and rushed over to the building he described. Following his directions, I walked down the hall until I arrived at a set of double doors, with a large sign proclaiming, sure enough, “Computer Room.” From the other side of the door came a satisfying clattering of high-tech machinery, hard at work.
Holding my breath, I eased open the door.
Inside was a huge room. There must have been 300 desks, all arranged neatly in rows. At each desk sat a woman, and on each desk was a Friden. The women were the computers! I kid you not (sorry, no men were there).
I found out later that their official job description was “GS-2, Computer.”
Once I had gotten over the shock, I approached the “head computer.” She explained to me how things worked. You used the same spreadsheet format we used — and still use today — except that each column only involved a single math operation. If, for example, the first two columns were the inputs, x and y, then the header for column three might read: (3) = (1) * (2).After all the calculations were defined, you turned things over to the computers who filled the numbers in. The foreperson assigned different parts of the job to different women, depending on the load. For a really big job, she would keep several parts running in parallel. The first multitasking, multiprocessing computer system, I suppose.
It all actually went quite smoothly. The computers rarely made a mistake, and they used redundant calculation to catch any errors. They would even plot the results up for me, although I rarely used that service. My boss grumbled that they used dull pencils and didn’t know how to interpolate. He and I both found that we could plot more accurately.
Sometime after they’d moved on to “real” (non-human) computers, Jack’s colleague came to him with an exciting idea:
He said, “Jack, I’ve come up with a neat computer program that I’d like you to take a look at.”“OK, John,” I said. “What does it do?”
“Well,” he replied, “Remember back in the good old days when we had to do computing by hand? Remember the way we used to make up those spreadsheets and turn them over to the computer ladies?”
I acknowledged that I had. We spent a little time congratulating ourselves for our progress, at having gotten away from such primitive methods.
John said, “Well, I’ve developed a computer program that works the same way. All you have to do is to define the formulas for each column of the spreadsheet and give the data. The computer does the calculations just like the computer ladies used to do and gives you a printout that looks just like a spreadsheet. I think it’ll be just the ticket for those people who don’t know how to program in FORTRAN. It will open up the use of computers to lots more people.”
I thought about it for all of 30 seconds, and said, “John, that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”
There was a moment of silence as John absorbed what I had just said. The sparkle in his eyes dimmed a bit. Crestfallen, he whispered, “Why?”
Now, in my defense you have to understand: in those days we were taught that computer time was precious — $600 per hour, at a time when $600 would buy more than a ticket to a rock concert. It was important, we were told, to keep the CPU busy doing productive work at all times. It was considered far more cost-effective to waste engineers’ time than computer time.
So I explained, “John, now that we have electronic computers, we have to learn to do things their way. Anybody who plans to be an engineer in the ’60s is going to have to learn to speak to computers in their language. You and I have learned to program so we can do that. What you’re trying to do is to ask the computer to make up for the deficiencies of the engineer. You’re forcing the computer to do extra work, just because the engineer is too lazy or too dumb to learn the computer’s language. You’re never going to sell an idea that uses a computer so inefficiently!”
As I spoke, you could see John slowly fall apart. His jaw fell slack, his shoulders slumped, and he actually seemed to age by years, right before my eyes. Finally he turned and left, a beaten and broken man.
I never saw John again. He sent me an example of the output of his program (I recall that it could do automatic graphing of its results, which was quite an innovation at the time). I promptly filed it under “dumb ideas.” I heard through the grapevine that John kept trying for awhile, halfheartedly, to interest someone in his spreadsheet program, but as I had predicted he was never able to do so, and he faded into obscurity, along with his program.
And that’s why you had to wait 15 more years for VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, and Excel.