Museum of Computing Machinery

In 1878, when the American James Ritty invented the first cash register, "The Incorruptible Cashier," his goal was to track every transaction of the day to control his employees. A few years later, he sold the patent to what became the National Cash Register, a globally successful company that produced millions of cash registers, including all those on display. With the invention of the Personal Computer, we return to an accounting method that dates back more than 4000 years: spreadsheets. In 1979, VisiCalc for the Apple II was released, the first interactive spreadsheet. Two years later, VisiCalc was surpassed by Lotus, optimized for the IBM PC, which in turn gave way to Microsoft Excel, which has dominated the electronic spreadsheet market from 1987 to today.