Claim for origin of "Cruisazy"

[Baker, John]

        "Software," in the broad sense of something contrasted to
hardware, is older than Tukey's 1958 use.  For example, from the
2/4/1955 issue of Science (via JSTOR):  "These samples came from a
Neolithic horizon containing software similar to that of Belt Cave
(sample P-19) and containing bones of ox and pig as well as of sheep and
goat."  This example from archaeology, of course, does not affect the
claim that Tukey coined the term in the computing context.

John Baker



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Fred Shapiro
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 12:18 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Claim for origin of "Cruisazy"

On Fri, 13 Jan 2006, Grant Barrett wrote:

> And then there's the "bundt pan" guy. How can you tell a grieving
> family that their patriarch's one supposedly noteworthy accomplishment

> amounts to showing up at the trademark office about a half-century
> after the cake, pan, and name already existed? (Obits, in fact, are a
> large source of wrong coinage attributions.)

I have been interested to see that the claim that John W. Tukey coined
the term "software," which was headlined in Tukey's New York Times obit
and got worldwide publicity, has held up over the years.  The Times
picked up the claim from an article I wrote, in which I went out on a
limb in asserting Tukey as the coiner based on somewhat limited
evidence.  The claim was furiously contested by a management consultant
in California who maintained he had used the term five years before
Tukey but was never able to produce a shred of evidence.  I regret that
I never contacted Tukey to ask him if he thought he coined it; my
article appeared a few months before his death, and I am not sure
whether he was aware of it.

Fred Shapiro


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