Coinage of "Software" & NY Times

[Fred Shapiro]

Once again I have to post a message correcting inaccurate statements
about me in the newspaper of record.  In today's New York Times, there is
an obituary of John Tukey with the headline "John Tukey, 85, Statistician;
Coined the Word 'Software'".

First of all, I would hesitate to assert unequivocally that Tukey coined
"software."  I found through JSTOR that he used the word in 1958, and this
is the earliest known use, but it may have been used still earlier by
someone else.

Second, the obit refers to me as "Fred R. Shapiro, a librarian at Yale Law
School who is editing a book on the origin of terms."  I am not editing a
book on the origin of terms, but am editing the (tentatively titled) Yale
Dictionary of Quotations.

Fred Shapiro


Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2