Where It All Began: The 10 Original Software Companies

Posted 06/28/2011 at 12:47pm | by Gord Goble

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Applied Data Systems Inc.

The early 1960s - 1963 in particular - was an instrumental time in the up-and-coming software world. We've already referenced several other companies that either began life or began to flourish during this era, decades before the concept of home computing had even been concocted, and we can now add another. Founded in San Francisco in 1963 and incorporated one year later, it was called Applied Data Systems Inc. (ADSI) and it lays claim to being "one of the oldest established, independent software companies in the world."

By 1967, ADSI was big news. Big enough that on June 21st of that year, it was featured on the front page of what would eventually become an industry media staple – Computerworld. There, in bold headlines, we see, "COBOL, RPG Bested By New Language?"

What the heck were they talking about? Well, it seems ADSI, under the leadership of one Peter Harris – who himself had turned down an earlier offer from fellow ex-IBM buddy Peter Nutt over at the newly formed Computer Sciences Corporation – had been slaving on a new programming language dubbed ADPAC. ADPAC, claimed ADSI, was far superior to IBM's much ballyhooed COBOL language (according to Harris, "The world thought COBOL was just terrible") and ADSI was out to prove it.

ADPAC was ultimately successful but not as successful as Harris felt it should have been – a situation he blames on IBM scooping all the juicy government contracts. Today, ADSI, now renamed ADPAC after its original programming language, continues to deliver mainframe solutions to those who need them.

Cincom Systems

Today, Cincom Systems proudly proclaims on its very own website that "The history of the software industry really follows the history of Cincom." And you know, they're not that far off the mark.

Founded in 1968, the same year we saw the television debuts of Hawaii 5-O and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Cincom was at the outset unique from the rest of our Top Ten. You see, it did not make software. Nevertheless, we feature it here. Why? Because Cincom recognized, long before the vast majority of people both inside and outside the industry, that software would one day be an entirely separate entity. Ultimately, its contribution was arguably just as key to the maturation of the industry.

Selling software in 1968? At a time when the mere suggestion of computers was enough to make most of us shake our heads and verbally question the sanity of anyone even thinking such weirdness? Why, yes, that's exactly what Cincom did.

Granted, the road wasn't easy. With a $600 investment and an office that consisted of a card table in the home of co-founder Thomas Nies, Cincom ran rather lean at the start, promoting the soon to be trendy idea of database management and selling one such system, named "TOTAL." But the years were kind to Cincom and less than a decade later its offices were found in such faraway spots as Japan, Belgium, and Australia.

   
The only constant in the computer industry is, apparently, Tom Nies' facial expression.

Today, with Nies still running the ship, Cincom is a multinational giant. That its point man is featured in the Smithsonian Institute's Computer History Collection is the icing on the cake.

Nintendo

By strict chronological definition not one of the world's first software developers, Nintendo Company is nevertheless a positively ancient entity by any standards – beginning life as Japanese playing card manufacturer Nintendo Koppai way back in 1887 – and is certainly one of the first businesses to jump aboard and drive the arcade and home video gaming bandwagon.

Now worth somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 billion dollars (what's a few billion between friends?), owner of Major League Baseball's Seattle Mariners, and creator of such classic – some might say irritating – video gaming icons such as Mario and Donkey Kong, Nintendo was far less affluent and far less prestigious when it made the switch in the mid-70s from toys and other less successful ventures to electronic games.

Even then Nintendo's primary interest seemed to lie in entire game systems, and soon it had become the Japanese distributor of one of the very first home gaming consoles, the Magnavox Odyssey. The "Color TV Game" series of consoles followed soon thereafter, but by the early 80s Nintendo had begun to carve a historical niche by shipping all-time software favorites such as the aforementioned Kong and Mario on both home-brewed and third-party systems.

It can be argued that Nintendo's biggest claims to fame are its full-on systems, but the company also delivered plenty of software to go along with the hardware. In the end, Nintendo's two-pronged attack helped shape the home gaming industry.

Microsoft

Microsoft is by no means one of the world's first software companies. But we simply can't keep harping on about programming languages, mainframes, and punch cards when most people consider software to be the programs we as end users load on our personal computers. Thusly, we're compelled to discuss the Redmond, Washington giant simply because its founders, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, are generally acknowledged as being not just the first people to accurately forecast that software as opposed to hardware was the way of the future, but to also successfully act on it.

And act on it they did. Though there was no shortage of entrepreneurs who seemingly saw the writing on the wall and entered the PC software game in its formative stages (such as Digital Research's Gary Kildall, the creator of the wrongly short-lived CP/M operating system), Gates and company finagled and stepped on a few shoes (most notably Kindall's) and took it to the max, writing a programming language for the primitive yet seminal Altair 8000 in 1975, developing first the Xenix and then the MS-DOS operating systems, and then pumping out the WYSIWYG Microsoft Word in 1983 and of course the graphical extension of MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows 1.0, in 1985.

By 1990, Microsoft had cut its earlier ties with IBM, released the Microsoft Works office suite, and slammed the market with a Windows version that had staying power – Windows 3.0. The rest, as they say, is history – except for one thing. Say what you will about Gates' business practices – and many have – but dude is one heck of a philanthropist.

Apple

Like Microsoft, Steve Jobs' and Steve Wozniak's Apple Computer may have been a late arrival to the computer party. But it wasn't late where it counted – the PC revolution.

Indeed, Apple's first computer, 1976's Apple I, was notable not just because it was handmade by a teenaged Jobs in his bedroom, which it was, but also for its compatibility with – gasp! – keyboards and monitors. Scoff if you want, but this was a time when competing PCs, of which there were precious few, relied on toggle switches and blinking lights. Can you say "Star Trek?"

But back to the software. Though the Apple I didn't actually feature software inasmuch as firmware, all that would change as new units rolled out. By 1978 and as an upgrade to the Apple II, Jobs and Wozniak released both a disk drive and Apple's first operating system, Apple DOS. By 1980 and the business-oriented Apple III, we had Apple SOS (Sophisticated Operating System), which would then morph into Apple ProDOS three years later.

But it was the Apple "Lisa," foisted upon an unsuspecting public just one year prior to the first Mac and priced at a groan-inducing $9995, that heralded Apple's first foray into full-blown graphical operating systems. In it, we found file browsers, document icons, spreadsheets, drawing tools, and much, much more. Apple's graphical OS thusly predated Microsoft's by two years and that alone was one giant leap for mankind.