Bean / Paper Review: Spreadsheet as a Tool for Thought I: Evolution of the Spreadsheet Interface
This is a series that takes a synoptical view of how spreadsheets changed the world<br>of business. In this post, we will look at the historical evolution of the spreadsheet interface.
Why spreadsheets continue to be one of the most successful mediums for computation is a question I have been<br>mulling over since we embarked on this project. This series is an attempt at piecing out an answer from the<br>multiple angles we have considered.
Clay Tablets
Nippur Tablet (CBS3323) from the Middle Babylonian Period circa 1400-1100 BCE
With the agricultural revolution circa 10,000 B.C., humans predominantly shifted from being hunter-gatherers to a<br>settled society. This led to a more complex societal organization, which necessitated division of labor. The<br>need to track and document economic transactions to manage the labour among multiple parties necessitated<br>bookkeeping. This was done<br>using the recording devices of the day, such as parchments, vellums, and clay tablets. Clay tablets provided a<br>solid substrate for the records because of their durability. Excavated clay tablets are some of the earliest<br>records<br>we have of data in tabular format.
Inferring from these archaeological records, the idea of tabulated data goes back at least as early as<br>the 26th century B.C. Clay tablets were baked with the accounts of citizens on the credits and debits<br>they owed in the community. This tabulation format was so pervasive that we find evidence of it quite<br>likely convergently evolving in remote parts<br>of the world throughout antiquity. There are multiplication tables dating from China from 300 B.C.,<br>which use bamboo sticks to<br>organize the data as tabular grids.
This format evolved as times progressed from ancient to medieval times across many ports of call and in<br>different<br>parts of the globe. They were propelled forward in bookkeeping devices in astronomy, geography,<br>religious<br>observances, etc. Contrary to popular belief, there was no homogenous suppression of science across all<br>the<br>cultures in the medieval ages, but rather the curiosity, bookkeeping, and utilitarian needs of the time<br>promoted<br>advancement of science and accompanying data collection. It has to be remarked here that our ancestors<br>didn’t conceive of science in the same terms as we see it today, but rather their context and<br>worldview were very different from ours to claim it was suppressed.
Tsinghua Bamboo Multiplication Tables
Universal History and Canon Tables of Eusebius
Some developments worth highlighting from the Middle Ages to give an idea of how the tabular format was<br>leveraged for sense-making purposes are the work on the Chronicon, the Canon tables, and the evolution<br>of “Computus” for calculating Easter dates. The first two of these were invented by Eusebius of Caesarea<br>who lived around 300 A.D.
In his Chronicon, Eusebius compiled and tabulated the significant dates and events across the world. In<br>creating this universal history table, we find his curiosity to gain a global picture of how history is<br>unfolding across time and space expressed as a 2D table.
The idea of Canon tables is even more interesting from the vantage point of spreadsheet design. This was<br>a device that helped identify the self-contained and repetitive passages across the four<br>Gospels of John, Luke, Mark, and Matthew. It created cross-references for passages that were repeated<br>across the four Gospels and thus helped with gaining a global sense of structure for students who<br>analyzed the Gospels.
The Computus
A principal use of astronomy in the medieval period was to calculate the date of Easter, around which a<br>significant part of Western religious life was centered. This collective need for marking the time of<br>Easter found its fulfillment in the Computus—a collection of algorithms that calculated these dates for<br>many years, sometimes hundreds of years, in advance.
Eusebius' Chronicon
Eusebius' Canon Tables
The Eastern Romanian monk Dionysius Exiguus reconciled the differences across different systems of<br>calculations and developed an algorithm for dating Easter. He also happened to devise the Anno Domini<br>(B.C. / A.D.) system used in the standard Gregorian calendar adopted across the world.
This system for calculating the Easter date is called the Computus. This Latin word is the root word for<br>“computer.” In contrast to the Galileo story that gets told about how the Church oppressed the<br>advancement of science, there is a very real way in which the computers we use today came out of the<br>bookkeeping and liturgical timekeeping needs of the clergy in the Middle Ages.
After the Middle Ages, science catapulted into prominence because of its demonstrated utility in the form<br>of various technologies and the marvelous strides made in understanding the natural world around us.<br>With the advancement of sciences, bookkeeping became a prominent activity, and a wide variety of data<br>across...