Business, Profile America, Technology

Profile America: Lotus 1-2-3

January 26, 2016 12:15 PM·

LOTUS 1-2-3

Profile America — On this date 33 years ago, the infant personal computer was empowered to become something much greater than a glorified word processor with the release of the spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3. The popular program drew acclaim as the first PC “killer application.” Finance and accounting workers were thus freed from hunching over ledger books and switched to hunching before a computer screen. The name “1-2-3” stemmed from the product’s integration of three main capabilities — spreadsheet, charting and graphing, and rudimentary database operations.

Today there are over 8,900 software publishers in the U.S., employing almost 430,000 people in the $170 billion per year business.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

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Author: Michael Benjamin is a public affairs consultant and an editorial board member at The New York Post. He is a former contributing columnist to the NY Post, City and State NY and other publications. He is a former Member of the New York State Assembly (2003-2010) and once led the Bronx Board of Elections. Since leaving office, he has appeared as a commentator on TWC NY1, Bronxnet OPEN, Good Day NY, and Al Jazeera America. His columns and blog focus on corruption, government, education, politics, redistricting, nuclear energy and race. He holds a B.A. in political science from Syracuse University.