By Benny Har-Even

As with most great events, the birth of the personal computer is somewhat hard to pin down. Was it the introduction of the Altair, the first kit computer introduced in 1975? Was it the moment Bill Gates managed to get IBM to agree to pay for a licence of his company’s operating system for every computer sold, or was it the first time IBM PC went on sale?

Whatever your opinion, there can be little doubt that a major milestone in the history of the PC in anyone’s book was the first application that got people to look at the personal computer as more than just a toy. This was VisiCalc, the world’s first spreadsheet, co-created by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston in 1979.

In these early days, computers were dismissed as being good for nothing more than playing games, but once the business community took a look at what the program could do, the need for a computer in the office became clear.

Ironically, while people associate PCs with ‘boring’ stuff like spreadsheets - a fact much played upon by Apple in its PC vs. Mac advertising campaign - the first spreadsheet was actually coded on an Apple II.