early+software

Computers originated in the 1930's and 40's. In the 50's computers were designed to help businesses specifically. It began growing drastically in the 70's and 80's. The first software programs were released in the 60's. Cullinane Corp goes public in 1978; it was the first to go public. The first PC company was founded in the 70's as well.

Early computers didn't have software, the operators of the computers had to punch holes in cards and feed the data into the computer to accomplish what they needed. This was very annoying because one mistake meant that everything had to be fixed and entered again. The second generation languages (2GL) were also made during the 50's. These languages used symbols to be interpreted by the processors but there still were no processors, instead there were still tubes and relays. It made things easier by eliminating all the 1's and 0's for programmers and they could use symbols (sto=store) for commands.

3GL FORTRAN (Formula Translation) was developed in 1953 and was intended for scientific and technological purposes. COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) The symbols were eliminated and programming language was created. In the 70's so called 'high level' languages like BASIC, PASCAL, ALGOL, FORTRAN, PL/I, and C have been born.

4GL Progamming launguage is no longer needed.



VisiCalc was the first computer spreadsheet program. It was released to the public in 1979, running on an Apple II computer. Considered 4G software. Used for businesses to calculate projected profits. Was capable of automatically updating the spreadsheet when numbers in a cell were changed.

WordStarby Micropro International, released in 1979, was the first successful word processing software program and was the best selling program of the 80's.