APL Programming Language
SketchPad
MULTICS Operating System
MS-DOS 1.0
Logic Theorist
Community Memory
Dartmouth BASIC/DTSS
Software has become embedded in almost everything we do and much that software was written decades ago and is either still running at the core of our modern systems or influenced how it was designed. Modern programmers will face this mountain of old code and need to better understand the thinking and design of this old software. This site’s purpose is to share software history and to describe important software examples including importance, source code, designs, and related videos and references.
Grace Hopper’s Tape from Mark I – Problem ‘L’ – Photo taken at The Smithsonian’s NMAH Archive
The term “soft-ware” was coined in 1958 by John Tukey at an interesting time in the history of software. In 1958, the first truly high-level programming languages had recently been developed such as LISP and FORTRAN. Work on languages such as ALGOL and COBOL had started. Software was becoming more portable between different computers and a concept of its own.