HISTORY OF SPREADSHEETS

Still loading...

	A	B	D	E	G	H	I	J	K	L	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T
1		Spreadsheets - the TRUE history of fully interactive spreadsheets & JIT						Special:Search	Main Page	404 error/
2		"A full five to six years before Bricklin and Visicalc"										(HYPONE is phenyl-methyl-acetone (C 6 H 5 .CO.CH 3 ))
3						DAVID JOHNSTON
4	News results for "michael jackson"
5		ICI, Rocksavage, Cheshire							WIKIPEDIA article
6									PLEASE NOTE: WIKIPEDIA HAVE DELETED THE ACTUAL ARTICLE "WORKS RECORDS SYSTEM" AND ALL LINKS TO IT, DESPITE A COPY OF THE MANUAL (ON WHICH IT WAS BASED) EXISTING IN THE COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA.
7
8
9
10
11
12											(The new owners of ICI)
13											WIKIPEDIA article
14
15		The birthplace of the first very powerful early shared public spreadsheet in 1974
16				3 years before APPLE II launch (1977)
17				7 years before IBM PC launch (Aug 1981)
18		i.e. Spreadsheets were not an 'invention' in 1979, since fully interactive, WYSIWYG spreadsheets were already in commercial use in 1974 on mainframes.
19
20		sex
21			Copy of 1974 Manual		PAGE 1 (of 8)		Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) - Mond Division
22							Brunner House, Northwich & Rocksavage Works, Cheshire, England
23
24							The "Product"		The "Works Records System"
25
26								Features:	3-D spreadsheet (time = 3rd dimension)
27									separation of data / calculation / Input/output
28									interactive, multi-user, networked
29									backup/recovery
30									security
31									"Remote Data" access
32									Database of aged values (hour/day/week/month/Qtr/year)
33									Built-in integrity checking (eg units attribute,consistency)
34									Row/column headers in Dynamic Tables
35									Uniquely identifiable (system-wide) data items
36									Histograms, WYSIWYG views, reports, cross references
37
38							Timeframe		In use from 1974-2001
39
40							The Team:					Extant?	Other products
41								Designer:	Dr. Robert Mais, employee of ICI, retired			yes
42								Analyst:	Graham Johnson. employee of ICI, retired			yes
43
44								Programmers:	Ken Dakin	Freelance Consultant		yes	OLIVER	SIMON	CA/EZTEST	Command-CICS
45
46									Philip Lath	ICI		?
47									Colin Done	ICI		yes
48									Other 1	contract		?
49								"Atestees"	6	(RM,GJ,KD,CD,PR,DP)		yes, 6 +
50
51							Technical:					Links
52								Architecture:	IBM 370	(compatible with z/Architecture)		IBM 370/145		IBM Z/Architecture
53									3270 "dumb" terminals			3270 image		IBM 3270 on wikipedia		Note 1.
54												A brief history of 3270's
55								Operating System	MVS			IBM MVS Operating System
56								TP Monitor	CICS Macro level (pre VS, XA, ESA)			IBM CICS		http://cicswiki.org/cicswiki1/index.php?title=Quasi-reentrant
57								Language:	IBM 370 Assembler			IBM Assembler
58								Librarian manager	Panvalet			Panvalet source code management
59								Database:	ADABAS			ADABAS Wikipedia
60								Techniques	Just-in-time compilation (= dynamic "on-the-fly" compile)			JIT compilation				Note 2.
61									Use of combinatorial, re-entrant machine-code "snippets"
62									Dynamically built, re-entrant executable code			http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reentrant
63									Optimizing Incremental compiler			Incremental compiler
64									(Similar to Dynamic programming algorithmic technique			http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Algorithms/Chapter_6
65									utilizing "memoization" but also - significantly - in conjunction with			Memoization				Note 3.
66									"referentially transparent" (deterministic) self-modifying code			http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referential_transparency_%28computer_science%29
67									- eliminating both time & space penalties)			http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-modifying_code
68									Compression			segmented system messages
69									Heavily "Table driven" code (Assembler 'Control tables') including..			similar to "Threaded code" technique, using pre-assembled indexed sub-routine calls.
70												http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_table			Custom built, multi dimensional
71									Branch Tables (super efficient trivial hash function technique)			Trivial hash function		http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/360_Assembly/Branch_Instructions
72		..."No computer experience or knowledge is needed to do this. An Application System can be built and modified on-line, by the user on his own VDU terminal remote from the main computer without involving computer staff at all"...										http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_table
73									- in effect a super-efficient "direct threading" indexed "threaded-code" methodology)			http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threaded_code_compiler
74									Binary search (where appropriate)			Binary search
75									Self optimizing fast-paths			Code self re-organized according to options & usage (reflection)
76		A copy of the full manual is now lodged with The Computer History museum, CA under the name "Imperial Chemical Indistries" "Works record System" [ http://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerHistory ] Lot#: X6241.2012 (The X files?)										Reflection (computer science)			http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_modifying_code
77									Double precision Floating point			Wikipedia Floating point			http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Floating_Point_Architecture
78		WRS Terminology							Native 3270 protocol (no BMS)			http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3270_Data_Stream				(SBA/SF/RA etc)
79		Application	one or more functionally complete Input/Output displays													`````Q
80									Direct access files (Data held on flat BDAM files)			Flat file				No keyed lookup
81		VDU	Visual display unit (IBM/3270 Model 2, 24 lines x 80 bytes)						ADABAS "relational" database (specifications only)							only for setup & "program code"
82									Shunting yard algorithm			http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation
83									Asynchronous background tasks			see CICS asynchronous transaction processing - (Transient Data)					Updating down the line DIR's
84		Function group	one of more lines of formulae						100% Pseudo conversational transactions
85									Automatic parallel recalculation of dependent values ('Dataflow')			http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataflow
86								Later Software technologies using similar techniques:
87		"DIR"	a unique "named cell" (literally a "Direct Input Record")					Notes (sic)
88			- all named cells were 'global' and accessible from any other spreadsheet					*1	"...a porting of Lotus 1-2-3 to mainframes with 3279 [4 or 7 color 3270] screens did not meet success
89		INPUT/OUTPUT Displays	The user "view" of the data						because its programmers were not able to properly adapt the spreadsheet's user interface
90			(i.e. a single sheet that could incorporate data from anywhere in the system						to a "screen at a time" rather than "character at a time" device" (Wikipedia).
91			-just as with Remote data in on-line spreadsheets like "Editgrid" today)
92								*2	"...Dynamic translation was pioneered [?] by the commercial Smalltalk implementation
93		REPORT	printed view of the data - designed by users online (WYSIWYG) and						currently known as VisualWorks, in the early 1980s; various Lisp implementations like Emacs picked the technique up quickly"
94			not necessarily the same as on a "spreadsheet"/input/output view.						(Wikipedia)
95								*3	"....Memoization was explored as a parsing strategy in 1991 by Norvig,
96		TITLE	Column or row heading						who demonstrated that an algorithm similar to the use of dynamic programming
97									and state-sets in Earley's algorithm (1970), and tables in the CYK algorithm of Cocke,
98		CHARACTERISTIC	Component part of a "named" data value (eg Kilogram,Tank level,Stock)						Younger and Kasami, could be generated by introducing automatic memoization
99									to a simple backtracking recursive descent parser to solve the problem of exponential time complexity.
100									The basic idea in Norvig’s approach is that when a parser is applied to the input,