Boeing Calc

Boeing Calc was the first spreadsheet program, which allowed three-dimensional calculation with pages, rows, and columns. It was developed initially for internal purposes of the computer department of the aircraft manufacturer Boeing (Boeing Computer Services). End of 1986, Boeing Calc 3.0 was offered as a PC software on the market. It supported worksheets with (theoretically) up to 16,000 rows and as many columns and pages. By using hard disk space as virtual memory whose capacity was only limited by the hardware of the disk. The maximum size for a file of Boeing Calc was then immense 32 megabytes.

At the surface, Boeing Calc leaned against the then popular Lotus 1-2-3, comprised just 89 functions and was 1-2-3 - or Symphony Spreadsheets import and export, both in DIF format and in ASCII. However, the use of Boeing Calc was limited by the very slow processing. Therefore, it was suitable primarily used to combine with Lotus 1-2-3 files generated in addition to three-dimensional calculations. It supported simple macros with keyboard recording that has been saved in separate files, not Lotus macros.

Boeing Calc was offered as a single user and a multi user version with access protection and record locking ( Locking of individual areas ) for up to eight jobs. It was supplemented by Boeing graph, a program that allows the calculation data could be displayed and printed as a two - or three-dimensional plots in many variants. In the fall of 1987, Boeing followed Calc 4.0, which, inter alia, advanced macros bot.

Version 3.0 sat PC XT or AT with at least 384 kilobytes of RAM and PC-DOS version 2.0 or higher ahead and supported math coprocessors. Version 4.0 required DOS 2.0 or 3.0 in the network version and 512 or 640 kB RAM.

From 1988 got Boeing Calc significant competition from programs such as Quattro Pro from Borland. A planned sale of the product failed. In August 1988, Boeing finally announced that we adopted from the field of PC software. While Boeing Calc disappeared from the market, Boeing lived graph as " Foxgraph " from Fox Software, the provider of Foxbase further.