Witness History The birth of the Excel spreadsheet
23 snips
Sep 30, 2025 The fascinating story behind the creation of Microsoft Excel unfolds with insights from developer Mike Koss. He shares how an enthusiastic young team combined secrecy with innovation, crafting a groundbreaking tool that transformed data management. Listeners will be amused by quirky anecdotes involving knitting and competitive spreadsheet sports! Discover the rivalry with Lotus, the clever marketing behind the name 'Excel,' and the journey from obscure beginnings to global usage. It's an exhilarating blend of tech history and culture!
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Secret Development With Late-Night Work
- Mike Koss describes Microsoft’s covert team building Excel in secret with covered windows and locked doors.
- His wife signed an NDA and knitted in his office while he worked late nights on the project.
A Young, Star-Studded Team
- The original Excel team were young Microsoft 'geeks' with most under 25 and a few older managers for supervision.
- Notable early team members included Charles Simonyi and Gabe Newell, who later became a space tourist and a major game-platform founder respectively.
Performance Constraints Shaped Design
- Bill Gates pushed for efficiency, so the team focused on a very fast recalculation engine.
- They squeezed features into the first Macintosh's tiny 128KB memory while preserving recognizable spreadsheet functionality.