was it an individual person who first created a spreadsheet and who was it?

Answer 1

There was a guy named Dan Bricklin who came up with an electronic spreadsheet, I think it was Visicalc. And then Mitch Kapor and his team developed Lotus 1-2-3.

Anyway, do some research on those names. Those are all from memories of speakers that I heard in business school.

Answer 2

In 1978 Dan Bricklin had the idea for a financial forecasting program. He linked up with Dan Fylstra, who had researched potential markets for personal computer software - something that at the time was in its early stages.

Fylstra liked Bricklin's idea and loaned Bricklin an Apple II to work on.

Bricklin was helped by his friend Bob Frankston to produce a prototype in spring 1979. They called it VisiCalc (visual calculations). It was completely novel on computers but reproduced and extended the manual paper spreadsheets that accountants had used.