Product Description

Awarded the 2003 American Association for History and Computing Book Prize presented by the American Association for History and Computing (AAHC).

From its first glimmerings in the 1950s, the software industry has evolved to become the fourth largest industrial sector of the US economy. Starting with a handful of software contractors who produced specialized programs for the few existing machines, the industry grew to include producers of corporate software packages and then makers of mass-market products and recreational software. This book tells the story of each of these types of firm, focusing on the products they developed, the business models they followed, and the markets they served.

By describing the breadth of this industry, Martin Campbell-Kelly corrects the popular misconception that one firm is at the center of the software universe. He also tells the story of lucrative software products such as IBM's CICS and SAP's R/3, which, though little known to the general public, lie at the heart of today's information infrastructure.

With its wealth of industry data and its thoughtful judgments, this book will become a starting point for all future investigations of this fundamental component of computer history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #439801 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 388 pages

From Booklist
When writers look at the birth of the computer age, they generally focus on the tangible hardware achievements of the likes of IBM and Intel and almost solely on Microsoft when it comes to software. Campbell-Kelly tells us that in the larger perspective, Microsoft is not the center of the software universe and indeed today makes up only about 10 percent of that industry. Mass-market "shrink-wrap" software is the retail version of a much larger sector that contributes to our lives constantly, running everything from airline reservations to bank transfers, credit-card transactions, and most corporate and government functions, including the space program. This is an area that is often ignored because software is hard to define; it is the nearest product we have that is virtually pure thought. Campbell-Kelly is the first historian to give us a comprehensive overview of this hidden industry, which spawned the first user groups when companies had to write their own programs for early IBM mainframes. He includes everything from the information infrastructure of IBM's CICS and SAP's R/3 to the ever-popular gaming software. David Siegfried
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Review
"In his incisive, panoramic book...Martin Campbell-Kelly delivers all three: context, insight, even occasional humor."
— Steve Lohr, The New York Times

"...Provides a smooth, very readable ride through the growth of one of the last half century's most important industries."
— Cal Clinchard, PC Today

"I strongly recommend this book..."
— Paul Ceruzzi, Paul Ceruzzi

"...a crucial document for anyone interested in understanding the history of software from a business perspective."
— Case, firstmonday.org

"From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog should command a wide audience..."
— Slashdot.org

"A valuable long view of what is...the high-visibility Silicon Valley stock-market bubble."
— Steven Poole, The Guardian

"A timely reminder of earlier booms and busts."
— Barry Fox, New Scientist

"Campbell-Kelly is the first historian to give us a comprehensive overview of this hidden industry..."
— David Siegfried, Booklist

"A well-rounded look at the software industry from a business perspective. Highly recommended."
— Colleen Cuddy, Library Journal

"This book is a major step forward in documenting the software industry's history. It contributes structure and content as well as insight and analysis."
—Burton Grad, President, Software History Center

"From a disparate array of sources, Campbell-Kelly deftly and neatly teases out a compelling history of the emergence, structure, and development of the computer software and services sector of the US economy."
—Arthur Norberg, Director, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota

"This book presents an exceptionally clearheaded overview of one of the most important industries of the twentieth century. No other work covers the business dimensions of the software industry so comprehensively or so clearly. It should be the starting point for anyone interested in the history of the software business."
—Steven Usselman, School of History, Technology, and Society, Georgia Institute of Technology

"Campbell-Kelly is the first historian to map the terrain of the software industry, from contractors through corporate products to personal computer software. This pathbreaking book is packed with data and insights that will be valuable to historians of business and technology, as well as to analysts of the contemporary software industry. It lays to rest a variety of myths and distortions about the software business, including the over-emphasis on Microsoft that has dominated writing about it to this time."
—JoAnne Yates, Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management, MIT

About the Author
Martin Campbell-Kelly is Reader in Computer Science at the University of Warwick.

Customer Reviews

Insightful!
From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog may sound like a mystifying title, but this book provides a reasonable overview of the history of the software industry. At times, given the ups and downs in the industry, it can't avoid sounding like a catalog of defunct firms and obsolete software. However, this chronology is quite useful for anyone who wants to come up to speed very quickly and very generally on the main trends in the industry. Author Martin Campbell-Kelly covers some of the industry's seminal events and the main categories of software. Vexingly or refreshingly, he takes pains to say as little about Microsoft as possible, making it clear that others have written enough on that subject. So, with that absence duly noted, we recommend this book to those who want an inside history of the software industry, from massive mainframes to little blue cartoon porcupines.

Insightful!
From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog may sound like a mystifying title, but this book provides a reasonable overview of the history of the software industry. At times, given the ups and downs in the industry, it can't avoid sounding like a catalog of defunct firms and obsolete software. However, this chronology is quite useful for anyone who wants to come up to speed very quickly and very generally on the main trends in the industry. Author Martin Campbell-Kelly covers some of the industry's seminal events and the main categories of software. Vexingly or refreshingly, he takes pains to say as little about Microsoft as possible, making it clear that others have written enough on that subject. So, with that absence duly noted, we recommend this book to those who want an inside history of the software industry, from massive mainframes to little blue cartoon porcupines.

Looping through Memories
This is a history of the Software Industry. "Software" was coined to distinguish it from hardware; it describes the spirit that activates electronic machines. There are three sectors: software contracting, corporate software products, and mass-market software products (pp.3-8). The book covers events from around 1950 to 1995 in the USA. Chapter 1 gives an overview of the sources available. Chapter 2 tells of the origins of software writing, and its need for high-maintenance. Could errors arise from "one minor change"? Early users cooperated in sharing software. FORTRAN and COBOL became the first standard programming languages. But high costs and slipped schedules became typical. Government support for SAGE helped establish US dominance of the computer industry (p.48). The "Great Society" led to investments in non-defense projects.

Chapter 3 discusses "Programming Services". The established techniques of engineering management filtered into programming projects. Program flowcharts became institutionalized, then flushed away by the "fad for 'structured programming'" (p.69). The boom for software companies in the late 1960s reminds me of the dot-com fever in the late 1990s. All fueled from government spending (p.75, P.80). The arrival of minicomputers around 1970 allowed middling companies to own a computer. Chapter 4 tells about the change to "Software Products". Computers were more plentiful and more powerful (pp.90-91), programmers didn't keep up. Lines of code used increased 1000% every 5 years, the cost of developing quadrupled by 1965. Page 100 discusses flowcharting, whose purpose was to graphically represent a program's operations. Sort of like a condensed slide presentation of a topic. Page 102 tells of a secret machine instruction used to improve sorting speed (what was it?).

Chapter 5 tells how the software industry acquired its current shape, and gives an overview. Software products was a capital goods business. Industry specific software requires in-depth knowledge; in systems software programming skills are critical. The success of CICS can be compared to a system of roads where applications can freely travel (p.151). Chapter 6 discusses the maturing of corporate software packages, and growth through acquisition. It focuses on three large firms that became prominent in the 1990s. Some grew by acquiring smaller firms for their products (diversification). The rise of the relational database had an adverse affect on older database technologies. The use of fully integrated business application software (ERP) created new companies. Pages 182-4 overviews the successes of Computer Associates. A relational database did not require knowledge of the internal structure of the database; ever faster computers masked its relative inefficiency. Sales of SAP R/3 benefited from the "fad for business re-engineering" (p.195). Page 197 explains why SAP is more important that Microsoft.

There are strong parallels with other historical systems, such as railroads to airlines. If the database was bundled with the operating system there would be no independent vendors. European firms were able to pioneer ERP because they not not been locked into "legacy software" (p.199). The remaining chapters discuss the history of the personal computer.