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From the same wikipedia article: --------------------- Paper spreadsheets The word "spreadsheet" came from "spread" in its sense of a newspaper or magazine i

From the same wikipedia article: --------------------- Paper spreadsheets The word "spreadsheet" came from "spread" in its sense of a newspaper or magazine item (text and/or graphics) that covers two facing pages, extending across the center fold and treating the two pages as one large one. The compound word "spread-sheet" came to mean the format used to present book-keeping ledgers—with columns for categories of expenditures across the top, invoices listed down the left margin, and the amount of each payment in the cell where its row and column intersect—which were, traditionally, a "spread" across facing pages of a bound ledger (book for keeping accounting records) or on oversized sheets of paper (termed "analysis paper") ruled into rows and columns in that format and approximately twice as wide as ordinary paper

yaddayadda 12y ago
My father was a CPA and was trained to use spreadsheets for things like double-entry accounting. The first time I ever saw a computer it was when he got a job where the accountants had computers [1] and he was so excited to show me a "computer-based spreadsheet" [2] and how it would do calculations automatically! Even with the computer doing the calculations, he still insisted on double-entry. [1] I remember visiting a very large room with raised floors; raised so that the cooling system could do it's job properly. I believe he was actually using a DOS system, so my memory of the computers being like big lockers must be of tape-backups or something like that. [2] i was a wee lad, but if memory serves, it was a predecessor to Lotus 1-2-3
- acheron 12y ago
  Likely Visicalc [1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visicalc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visicalc