Anecdotes
What makes software history so much fun is that most of the people
who were active in the early days are still around to talk about it. The industry has
changed so rapidly that "ancient history" is only twenty to thirty years ago so
most software pioneers are still relatively young people with their memories intact. They
have a lot of fascinating, funny, and revealing stories to tell about the challenges of
devising new, useful things to do with computers and creating an industry based on a new
kind of technology. We want to collect as many stories as possible, both because these
memories are invaluable to the scholars studying the history of software and because these
stories are inspiring to today’s entrepreneurs who continue to face the challenges of
creating new markets for technology.
We are looking for short anecdotes (not more than two to three
typewritten pages) recalling a specific event or personal experience which was significant
to the growth or shape of the industry. Examples might include descriptions of
"firsts" such as first accounting programs, first manufacturing control
programs, first operating systems, first languages, etc. Other examples might include how
a new product or company got started or how a company recovered from what looked like a
disaster or how an industry practice came to be.
Here are some examples of the kind of
stories we’re looking for.
Informatics and (et) Informatique by
Walter F. Bauer
How the term "Informatics" became a brand name in the U.S.
but a generic term in Europe.
How ADR Got Into the Software Products
Business and Found Itself Competing Against IBM by Martin A. Goetz
The story behind the transformation of ADR from a successful
programming services firm to an even more successful software products firm.
The First Commercial Univac I Installation
by Burton Grad
Programming manufacturing control applications for General Electric
in 1954.
How ICP Solved My Biggest Marketing
Problem by Luanne Johnson
How a small software company relied on the ICP catalogs to reach a
nationwide market.
From Not-Invented-Here to Off-The-Shelf
by Luanne Johnson
How the competitive environment for applications software companies
shifted in the mid-1970s
Getting Hooked on Software by Lee Keet
How customer-driven development led to continuous upgrades and
feature enhancement for a typical software company in the 1960s.
How IBM Killed the Market for Boole &
Babbage's CUE Product by Ken Kolence
How IBM responded to B&B's Configuration Utilization Evaluator
which frequently showed that performance bottlenecks were in the less expensive peripheral
devices rather than in the CPU.
Tales from the Early Years of CSC by Ken
North
How Fletcher Jones sold CSC services to the CEO of Sperry-Rand and
how he anticipated the convergence of computers and communications.
Pansophic: A Typical 1960s Start-up by
Joe Piscopo
Three technical wizards learn that marketing matters.
How the ICP Directory Began by Larry Welke
How Larry Welke came up with the idea of publishing a catalog of
software products three years before IBM unbundling legitimized the viability of selling
software as a product.
How the ICP Million Dollar Awards Got Started
by Larry Welke
How Welke set out to disprove the skeptics who said that there was
no money to be made selling software.
If you have an anecdote you'd like to share, please click here to send us an email letting us know
about it.
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