The most important invention in your lifetime is…
In the early 1980s, I took two computer programming classes for my business degree, including COBOL. We used old-fashioned punch cards to edit and run the programs. I remember visiting a computer lab that had personal computers, but access was restricted. In another class, I was introduced to an early Microsoft spreadsheet program called Multiplan.
Accountants did not use personal computers at my first job at a public accounting firm. Instead, we wrote the information needed to produce an income tax return on a form, and someone else would enter the data for the mainframe to process.
At my next job a few years later, personal computers were indispensable to my work as an accountant. Instead of writing transactions by hand on ledger paper or in ledger books as bookkeepers have done for centuries, we directly entered transactions into the general ledger system.
In the early days, I used the spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3. Eventually, we switched to Microsoft Excel. Spreadsheet software enables accountants to produce much better workpapers and to analyze huge volumes of data.
It’s hard for me to imagine what my career would have been like without personal computers. The work would have been tedious! I have been sitting in front of a PC for thirty-five plus years!
Innermost Being 