"Everyone loves spreadsheets!": Why financial advisor amassed record software collection

We all know someone who loves a spreadsheet… but they’ve got nothing on this guy.

Ariel Fischman (USA) owns the world’s largest collection of physical spreadsheet software, with 506 unique items as of 2018.

Almost a decade on, the financial advisor says his haul has grown to over 1,000.

With International Accounting Day coming up on 10 November, there’s no better way to celebrate than taking a look inside this record-breaking accumulation.

The married dad-of-two’s collection began after he became fascinated with the origin story of spreadsheets and decided to write up the history of the format.

The electronic spreadsheet was invented in 1978 by Dan Bricklin, who was studying for a master’s degree at Harvard, alongside his friend Bob Frankston.

Ariel said: “[They] had to do an exercise with a series of interrelated equations and since computers were just emerging, it wasn’t something that everyone had in their home in the 70s. They asked themselves the question, ‘can we find a way to automate the calculations?’”

Together, Bricklin and Frankston created a program called VisiCalc, which established the basic design that would evolve into Excel.

Ariel added: “From my point of view, that was the day that revolutionized the relationship between humans, data, and mathematics, at least on a massive scale.”

Read about more records like this in our dedicated Collections section.

His collection, which you can see a full catalogue of here, includes three of approximately 100 versions of a program called T.H.E Spreadsheet, which was created by Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, as well as two beta versions of Excel from before the program was published.

Ariel has had some help in amassing his collection too. He once said in an interview with FastCompany that he’d been struggling to get his hands on Excel 2001 for Mac.

He told us: “When the article was published, someone from Apple reached out and said he had worked on that product - he programmed it - and was willing to send me his personal copy. Now I have it.”

When asked why he loves spreadsheets so much, he said: “The fact that they revolutionized the relationship between humans and data, and that their existence contributes billions of hours of productivity to mankind every year.”

And of course, Ariel uses spreadsheets for “everything”!

He added: “Everyone loves spreadsheets; some people simply haven’t stopped to think about it!”