Software; today worth billions, and everyone buys at least some for their computer, but what was the first time that someone thought they could make money from a program and sold it to others?
I’m not even thinking digital, the computers could be analog.
I’m guessing that no one sold sets of specific gears and cams for Differential analyzers and that Hollerith machines were not programmable.
But did anyone ever sell details of specific setups for analog computers (I’d call this a type of program with human imput)?
Guess the answer will be some mundane payroll program for a digital machine, but when & what was the very first commercial program and what did it cost.
An excellent question that I wish I knew the answer to!
I suggest (aka my WAG is) that selling software was not feasible until at least two conditions were met:[list=1]
[li]common computing platforms[/li][li]common storage media[/li][/list=1]
That would suggest something written for the first massed-produced IBMs, maybe the 360 Series? Arguing against this is that IBM was extremely protective of it’s hardware and outsiders wouldn’t know enough about the machines to program for them.
If it counts, I think the first computer program sold widely to home users was Pong, the tennis simulator.
Yabob, that’s a great example. I never knew such problems existed. But yes indeed, a strong case could be made for calling those cards “software” (and a strong vase could be made against it too). OTOH, if the cards for a loom count, then I bet the scroll for a player piano would also. And those were actually sold commercially, not merely stolen.
Jeff Olsen, I don’t remember what else was being sold around then, but you’re testing the definition of software too. Visicalc was application software which was useless without DOS, which was operating system software, and certaintly fit into the “commercial” category.
I brought up the Jacquard Loom because it is often cited as the first programmable machine. Given that, well, there were programs for them. Dollars to donuts those textile mills sold or licensed each other punch cards for ingenious or popular patterns as well as swiping them. Although, seriously, it couldn’t have been that hard to “reverse engineer” your rival’s pattern.
Piano rolls are very analogous.
In terms of what the OP was actually thinking of, very soon after commercial computers arrived on the scene, there were consulting houses which did custom application programming. This source points to Computer Usage Corporation, founded in 1955:
If you flip to the next page, you will find that several of the consulting / services firms in the 60’s started selling software products, and products companies started emerging as well:
The line is probably really fuzzy. Very likely, companies who were doing business with the consulting firms eventually realized that they wanted to buy some of the compilers, file managers, application templaters, etc. that the consultants were using to write the custom applications for them. Those initial sales were probably one-offs, extra revenue realized for something the consulting firm never initially intended to package and sell as a product.
The first Fortran compiler dates back to the late 50s and was, I think, commercial software, even it is wasn’t sold since you had to rent an IBM to run it.
Yes, a strong case can be made for the Jacquard loom. I once watched one run for about a half hour when I was in Japan (in a textile museum/store in Kyoto) and found it utterly fascinating. I watched till I understood, more or less, how it operated mechanically. One of the operators was an elderly man who spoke good English and I had an interesting discussion with him. It turned out that the card deck was punched by a computer controlled machine! So what goes around comes around.