As well as being Australia Day, January 26th is also the anniversary of the first release of Lotus 123 (for my younger readers, “Lotus” is what we used to call spreadsheets, before they became “Excel”). Lotus 123 is now 26, and still going.

This news was brought to you via John Walkenbach’s Blog which includes a screenshot, which appears to be Release 3, but other than the 3 on the end of the file extension, and the worksheet letter on the front of the cell address, looks identical to the original release.  It may not be pretty, but the functionality made the bigest change to the way engineering calculations are made and presented since the introduction of the scientific calculator (The Hewlett Packard HP-45 was released 10 years earlier, if I remember correctly).

Evidence that 123 is still not totally defunct:  The IBM Lotus Forum

Another blogger with fond memories of the spreadsheet before Excel