Lotus Magellan is an

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

desktop search Desktop search tools search within a user's own computer files as opposed to searching the Internet. These tools are designed to find information on the user's PC, including web browser history, e-mail archives, text documents, sound files, images ...

package, conceived and developed by Bill Gross and released in 1989 by Lotus Development Corporation, most famous for

Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM). It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles i ...

. Lotus sold 500,000 copies of Magellan. Zoot!
By James Fallows, August 1997 Issue, The Atlantic, ''...Lotus sold roughly 200,000 copies of Agenda (at an average retail price of $195) and 500,000 copies of Magellan (around $50) before canceling each of them in the early 1990s...''

Operation

Running under MS-DOS, Magellan would scan the directories and files on a drive or floppy diskettes and create a master index. It was aware of all the various current formats and provided the ability to view files without launching the original applications that created them. Its most powerful feature was fuzzy searching, that connected files by relative frequency of keywords, allowing the user to organize related data no matter where or in what format it existed on the user's computer. Given this "semantic view" of the user's file system, Magellan not only exposed "hidden meaning" from disparate data, but also facilitated the actual movement of files and directories into a better physical organization. Advertisements that ran for Magellan at the time promised to "Get all your ducks in a row" and showed a picture of a line of obedient

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Fate

Magellan was one of several significant developments from Lotus Software (i.e. "1-2-3", "Notes" and office software for the

Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

) that, despite significant usefulness and market share, failed to keep the company from becoming another brilliant also-ran. Lotus was acquired by IBM in 1995. The old MS-DOS Lotus software Magellan,

Lotus Agenda Agenda is a DOS-based personal information manager, designed by Mitch Kapor, Ed Belove and Jerry Kaplan, and marketed by Lotus Software. Lotus Agenda is a "free-form" information manager: the information need not be structured at all before it ...

, HAL, and Lotus Manuscript have since been released as freeware.

References

External links

Lotus Magellan software depository
Daniel's Legacy Computer Collections {{Lotus Software File managers DOS software

Magellan Ferdinand Magellan ( or ; pt, Fernão de Magalhães, ; es, link=no, Fernando de Magallanes, ; 4 February 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer. He is best known for having planned and led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the East ...