From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry (History of Computing) (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "In January 1952, half a century ago, Fortune magazine ran an article titled "Office Robots..." (more)
Key Phrases: corporate software industry, microcomputer software market, personal computer software firms, Computer Associates, United States, Digital Research (more...)

Editorial Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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

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

"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

"I strongly recommend this book..."
— Paul Ceruzzi, The Times Higher Education Supplement

"In his incisive, panoramic book... Martin Campbell-Kelly delivers all three: context, insight, even occasional humor."
— Steve Lohr, The New York Times

"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

"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

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 388 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (March 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262033038
• ISBN-13: 978-0262033039
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #897,891 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Looping through Memories, September 27, 2003

By	Acute Observer (North Jersey Shore) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Look At The Evolution Of The Software Business, June 29, 2003

By	Brian Turchin (Merrick, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I wasnt sure how I would like Martin Campbell-Kellys new book since I have grown up with the software industry--I started as a programmer in 1973and thought I had a pretty good understanding of it. But on the contrary I found his book fascinating. Over all I thought Campbell-Kelly weaved together many hard-to-find facts and statistics into a comprehensive, well-researched, and well-written story of how the software industry evolved

Basically, it reviews the development of the various software industry segments; what we now refer to as professional services companies, enterprise product software companies, personal computer software companies and game companies. For each, it describes the major events that created these industry segmentse.g. in 1970 IBM unbundled its software pricing from its hardware pricing ushering in age of product software companies; the major companies who dominated these segments; and the business models.

A few things that were of particular interest to me.

When I grew up in the software business, we used lines of code as a way to estimate the work it would take to create an application. I have overseen the development of systems with millions of lines of code. So I was surprised to learn how few lines of code were in DOS 2.0, just 20,000+, and even more surprised to learn that the venerable early business language Fortran, in its first incarnation, was only 18,000 lines of code.

And it helped put into context what I have lived through. For example, in 1973, straight out of C.C.N.Y., I first entered the job market as young Cobol programmer trainee at Royal-Insurance Company in New York. As a youngster I had no awareness that Thomas Watson Jr. bet his business on the IBM360, or that it was the reason for IBMs unprecedented industry dominance. I just knew that I worked on IBM 370-145, an updated, at that time, version of the IBM 360.

And does this sound familiar? Never before has the stock market shown quite so much enthusiasm about an industry as it has lately about the computer industry. Recent prices of computer stocks represent some of the highest prices-earning ratios ever recorded. Even shares of giant I.B.M, which increased six fold between 1957 and late 1966, have doubled since. In July the market valued I.B.M., whose physical assets amount to less than $6 billion , at more than $40 billionmore than any other company in the word, actually as much as gross national product of Italy. And the market value of smaller and newer companies in the industry has gone up even more steeply than I.B.M.s. In less than three years the price of University Computing Co. of Dallas rose form $1.50 a share(adjusted for splits) to $155. The stock market valued this newcomers, who sales last year were than $17 million, at more than $600 million.

This quote that Cambell-Kelly provides is about the timeframe 1964-1968, which was another time period of irrational exuberance, like our recent dot.com debacle. Only I hope that our recovery will be sooner than that one. It evidently, took almost ten years for the market to again buy software company stock.

I do have one quibble, though. Campbelly-Kelly challenges the common perception that Microsoft dominates the technology industry. He quite correctly cites statistics which show that, even if Microsoft is a giant, IBM is a titan, towering over Microsoft; where Microsoft has at most owned 10% of the software industry, IBM owned fully 75% of the entire IT industry consisting of computer hardware, software and services. To put this into perspective, the total of computer hardware, software and services revenues world-wide today is thought to be something like $1 trillion. If IBM had maintained its earlier level of control it would now be worth $750 billion while Microsoft today has revenues of roughly $28 billion. His point is that while IBM was almost the entire industry by itself, Microsoft controls just a piece of the software industry.

While this is true, I dont believe the issue of Microsofts dominance is about revenues. I believe it is about cultural impact--which Campbell-Kelly does allude to. Microsoft, almost single-handed, created a cultural revolution, making it fashionable to be a nerd, to dress casually in business, to work insane hours, to believe as a young twenty-something you can be an over-night millionaire. Whereas IBM made an impact on businesses--certainly being viewed for a long time as one of, if not, the best-run business on the planet--Bill Gates and company, captured the publics imagination and changed our society in a way IBM never did. And why not, when Bill Gates and Paul Allen are the first and third richest men in the world.

All in all though, this book was an enjoyable and insightful read.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful!, June 8, 2004

By	Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract.com" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.