Clarification Relating to First Use of "Software"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 9/9/2012 09:18 PM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>I meant to type "1958," not "2000," for the date of Tukey's usage of
>"software."

Ah, I wondered.  I was writing software long before 2000.  :-)

But I also wonder about 1958.  (I was writing software before then
too, although not for very long and I called it "programs.")  The
first programmable machines (I exclude Jacquard looms and Ada
Lovelace) were developed in the 1940s; Assembly languages were used
in the early 1950s, and FORTRAN appeared in 1954.  I would not be
surprised if "software" was hiding somewhere slightly earlier than 1958.

With regard to
>The OED fails to recognize that there was a material-culture sense
>of "software" that long predated the computer sense.  Here is an early example:
>
>1850 _Sharpe's London Journal_ July 251 (British Periodicals)  At
>the conclusion of the last war, the old stocks [of porcelain] in the
>Royal Manufactory of Sevres [accent over first e] were put up to
>auction, and bought by certain individuals, who also collected all
>the soft ware they could find in the possession of other persons.

This "soft ware" seems to be particular to pottery ("Under soft ware
again may be included unglazed earthenware, terra cotta,
common pottery, and mato- lisa ware."), thus simply "(pottery) ware
that is soft", presumably in contrast to porcelain et al., and not
some early form of a compound (word, that is).  Does it deserve its
own dictionary entry?

Joel

>Fred Shapiro
>
>
>
>
>________________________________
>From: Shapiro, Fred
>Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2012 9:15 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Cc: jester at panix.com
>Subject: Clarification Relating to First Use of "Software"
>
>I published an article in 2000 in the IEEE Annals of the History of
>Computing, antedating the OED's first use of the word "software" by
>finding it used by statistician John W. Tukey in 2000.  This
>discovery received worldwide attention when Tukey died and the New
>York Times headlined his obituary describing him as the coiner of "software."
>
>Tukey's coinage has not gone unchallenged.  Someone named Paul
>Niquette has claimed energetically for years that he originated the
>term, but he has never come up with any kind of documentation of his
>claim.  The Wikipedia entry for John W. Tukey points to a 1956 usage
>in Google Books, but whoever wrote about that did not see the book in question.
>
>I have borrowed the 1956 book from the library of the Jet Propulsion
>Laboratory.  It turns out that the occurrence of "software" there
>does not refer to computer programs.  However, the citation may
>possibly be worthy of inclusion in the OED with square brackets
>around it, or under a different sense of "software."  Here it is:
>
>1956 _Second National Symposium on Quality Control and Reliability
>in Electronics_ (Professional Group on Quality Control, Institute of
>Radio Engineers and the Electronics Technical Committee, American
>Society for Quality Control) 149  A missile system includes the
>vehicle and warhead, the auxiliary ground or airborne equipment, the
>support and test equipment, and the operating personnel.  In
>addition, the interactions between these various elements, hardware
>and software (people), must be recognized and included as the glue
>that holds the system together.
>
>The OED fails to recognize that there was a material-culture sense
>of "software" that long predated the computer sense.  Here is an early example:
>
>1850 _Sharpe's London Journal_ July 251 (British Periodicals)  At
>the conclusion of the last war, the old stocks [of porcelain] in the
>Royal Manufactory of Sevres [accent over first e] were put up to
>auction, and bought by certain individuals, who also collected all
>the soft ware they could find in the possession of other persons.
>
>Fred Shapiro
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org