The common phrase 'to software around it' was how the term was used the most, much to my dismay -- basically, by engineers who had no more room for components (or money in the design budget) and wanted to slip the problem into someone else's domain (mine). Today, with processing speed as it is, 'software-arounding' things is normal but in those days it was not often a wise choice. 

PN: How much do you recall about 1957 and the first international sports car rally in the U.S. -- and the "Ralliac"?

The Ralliac was designed to produce the critical mileage information using pulses generated by a magnet on a wheel passing the 'read head' mounted closed by.  Precise timing would be supplied by clock circuits within the Ralliac.

Sports car rallies were international events in those days.  They often lasted 24 hours and represented a total distance to be traveled of many hundreds of miles.  There would be dozens of contestants.  Counting the planning and checkpoint staffing for the rally, there must have been many other people spending a great deal of time in addition to the rally contestants. 

Our planning for the first application of the Ralliac included its installation in a new car donated by a local dealer...

PN: As the "hardware" guy, my assignment called for me to provide a demonstration at a Beverly Hills luncheon sponsored by a certain Renault dealer.  All I had at that time was one printed circuit board.  It was populated with advanced electronic components like diodes and transistors and was just small enough to fit in your jacket pocket. 

In his introduction to your presentation, the owner of the dealership exulted about cars ("the era of the small car is upon us") and about new electronic technologies (using the not uncommon mispronunciation "digitile computors"). At the appropriate moment in your presentation, you passed the board around the table.  That was all we needed.  The subject of your "software" never got mentioned.  The same afternoon, we were handed the keys to a brand new sedan.

PN: Right you are, Bill.  The rally was suddenly cancelled by the sponsor.  European contestants were caught in mid-ocean with their sports cars covered with cosmoline. 

After several week-ends of frantic soldering and coding, you and I suffered the instant obsolescence of the Ralliac.  And I shall never forget the day we had to return the no longer new Renault to the dealer.

He was the CBS VP for Programming.  This was one of a number of incidents that taught us the need to hire people from the industries we hoped to serve if we wanted to speak their language.  We did get the contract.  Some time later, a CBS technician said to me "Hey, you bastard, you cost me my job!  Now, how about giving me one?"  I said, "That's fair." and we hired him.  After a few months, he used the expertise he learned at TRWC to get a much better job at CBS as Manager of Computer Operations.

PN: Coincidence Alert: During that time period, Walt, I was also with TRW, on a consulting assignment in air traffic control at the fledgling FAA at the National Aviation Facility Experimental Center (NAFEC) in Atlantic City, so I did not know about the [vehicular traffic control] initiative.

PN: Ironically, just last month [April, 2001], I attended a "brown-bag" luncheon in San Francicso put on by one of my colleagues at Booz Allen Hamilton.  Our firm has a consulting contract with Caltrans and other highway jurisdictions for -- well, suffice it to say, I have no doubt that you would find the technical means for characterizing traffic congestion, and the remedies are all familiar enough.  The Law of Unintended Consequences prevails universally.  There is a tangle of conflicting interests that impede solutions, if indeed solutions there be (apart from bicycles, of course).

PN: At UCLA's ITTE in 1953, a couple of us, with Dan Gerlough's approval and mentoring, invented an electric wheel sensor, using a rubberized tape with sinuous metal conductors inside, to replace the pneumatic tube contraptions of that time.  We placed them in pairs across traffic lanes, separated by a yard, and, with an electromechanical timing device, we were able to classify speeds, thus solving what I called the "density-lock deception" [flow-rates measured with single-point detectors will decrease with congestion tricking the analysis into thinking congestion is clearing out].  My guess is that your sensor was the "embedded loop"; if so, it is still in use today -- also deployed in pairs, but, alas, often not connected to any recording devices, due to budget constraints.

PN: One quasi-historian is interested; that's for sure.  More coincidence, Walt.  I was involved about a year later with an awkward, non-computerized system at Scantlin for controlling clusters of intersections around the Los Angeles Coliseum.

PN: Yes, I do know about this idea, which has its roots as follows:
 
• In mid-1953 some of us at ITTE, with Dan Gerlough's approval and mentoring, did a study of afternoon congestion on the UCLA campus -- a time when departing vehicles should have been diverging and therefore more or less free-flowing.  Our hypothesis was that a goodly (badly?) number of cars parked in lots at the South end travelled through the campus to exit North on Sunset Blvd., and vice versa, North parkers exiting southbound onto Westwood Blvd.  We hired a bunch of "student workers" at $1.25 per hour to dab poster paint onto bumpers of parked cars, color coded by lot.  In the late afternoon, we stood around the campus, clicking our Veeder-Root counters and -- well, the rest is history.  The remedy was -- and is -- the one-way street system on the UCLA campus.

• In late-1953, some of us at ITTE, with Dan Gerlough's approval and mentoring, did a study of the Hollywood Freeway, which suffered anomalous congestion in the morning.  You will recall that not all freeway entrances were on the right side in those days.  Our hypothesis was that a badly number of commuters came onto the freeway -- on the left side -- at Barham Blvd and upon seeing congestion ahead, proceeded to change lanes to the right in order to get off at the next exit ramp (Silverlake), inflicting thereby an increase in travel time upon every vehicle behind them -- about 1.75 seconds each, as I recall.  Poster paint was out of the question.  Instead, we used Tel-Audograph recorders (magnetic tape? -- what's that?) to record license numbers, along with time codes at Barham and at Silverlake. Then we punched up Hollerith cards for the SWAC and -- well, the rest is history.  The remedy for that time, by the way, was the extreme in vehicle metering: saw-horses across the on-ramp at Barham every morning.

• In early-1954, I began my work on density lock with Dan Gerlough's approval and mentoring, which culminated in my undergraduate thesis paper in 1955, which was based on controlled experiments on Hildegard Blvd. and won the Deans Award (ahem), entitled "Experiments in Spacing of Stopped Vehicles for Improving Linear Flow."  Hey, I even got to do some crude modeling on the SWAC, using the line printer for a primitive "graphical display" showing platoons of vehicles, each depicted with a two-digit code representing their respective speeds.  Hot stuff, that.

• In late 1954, I began promoting the idea of "vehicle metering" in speeches and campus forums, repeatedly refuting doubters ("It makes no sense to stop cars getting onto the freeway!") using a slogan, "If you don't stop them before they get on, density lock will make the freeway into a parking lot."  Dan Gerlough bought into my argument, but, like so many other innovations for which we were advocating (seatbelt interlock, radar speed meters, high intensity runway lights), metering signals would take years -- and your imprimatur along with Dan's, apparently -- before acceptance.

PN: So do I.  At that "brown bag" on traffic congestion last month, Walt, I saw a slide depicting a venerable scattergram -- that plotting of double-valued flow-rate versus speed (a horizontal "V" -- remember?) and got tears in my eyes.

Dear Paul;

All the time I worked at TRW, I don't recall hearing the term "software."

I left TRW to become a Professional Public Speaker.  I started out with the talk "Atomic Energy - Peasant Style" but soon thereafter developed one I called "Giant Nincompoops" -- about computers obviously.  I presented that talk off and on for 10 or 15 years, and I don't recall during all that time ever using the term
"software" in my talks, so I couldn't have been aware of it.

So, I have no idea when I became aware of it or the source. 

Sorry, I can't help you, Paul.  I would've been glad to if I could.  I always had high regard for your brains and your 'way-out-in-front knowledge of computers.

It's been a pleasure to have known you and to have learned from you.

Your friend, 
Ray

Thanks for your message, Ray.

Perhaps you do remember that in 1957, TRWP (pronounced "twerp") was solemnly engaged in launching a new business development that called for marketing unfamiliar technology in a risk-averse business environment --  the earliest applications of small, primitive digital computers ("digitile computors") that would be put into service exerting absolute real-time control over safety-critical systems, including chemical factories, oil refineries, and nuclear power plants.  "Closing the Loop," read the headlines.

    Nothing to kid around about. Soft things need not apply.

Ten years later, Ray, I had the privilege of attending a performance of "Giant Nincompoops" at a management club banquet at Scientific Data Systems.  I sat crimson-faced in the audience as the speaker singled me out for recognition as the pedagogical source (LA Tech, remember?) for the material being lampooned -- but not the comedic inspiration for the lampooning.
And no, I don't think the talk included so much as one utterance of the word 'software,' which for general audiences -- even in 1967 -- would have necessitated a pause for etymology (see "Cultured Laughter").

My own laugh-line in those days was not suitable for general audiences.

Imagine your wife complaining to her mother, "All he ever talks about is software."

We are loyal and true, Ramo-Woo
For together we stand
To fight Remington Rand,
IBM and Bendix, too.

Well, while consulting for the FAA, I also wrote simulation software for the IBM 709 and commented with a straight face...

"After last night, I don't seem to have any more problems with my software."

Best regards,
    Paul

When ideas are named, as you no doubt realize, they act as seed crystals for inspiration, and only when something has a name can it become the subject of study, thought, and discipline. So if you hadn't come up with the name, all would have been different.  I also think that it was important that it be a neologism because some of the stupid debates about the meaning of "knowledge" and "information" would not have gotten off the ground if the term had not been clearly different (as in "real-information" vs. "computing information"). 

I have spent some considerable time over the last few years trying to work out the origin of the word "language" in the sense of instructions for computers. The word programming is older, obviously coming from optimization and linear programming, but the curious sense of "language" used -- which has gotten all sorts of people into all sorts of knots by making them think of human languages rather than thinking of machine codes and symbologies -- derives from a minor, restricted use that was formerly considered arcane. 

What we know of it is: 

• Not used by Aitken, Booth, Church, Curry, Goedel, Laning, Lovelace, Post, Turing, Von Neumann, Wilkes. They use "system," "code," "instructions";
• Prior use of the term to describe closed system of word – mathematical language, engineering language;
• Use in this sense by Backus 1954 "Can a machine translate a sufficiently rich mathematical language into a sufficiently economical program?";
• Prior use as system of signs (semiotic use);
• Used in modern sense by 1958 (AlGOL, IAL, JOVIAL, CODASYL etc.);
• Standard term for programming system by 1962.

I would love for you to draw on your rich storehouse of memories and help me unravel this problem! Thanks anyway for your most illuminating work.

The mental exercise to which I was invited by this message proved unavailing, except that I am now all the more sympathetic to the difficulty faced by my friends and family in trying to respond to my queries about the word 'software' (when did you first hear it?  learn its meaning? from whom?)

The word 'lan·guage' has made a long but, I suspect, rapid metaphorical journey from its literal origins...

Etymology: Middle English, from Old French langage, from langue, tongue, from Latin lingua.

1a. Communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols. b. Such a system including its rules for combining its components, such as words. c. Such a system as used by a nation, people, or other distinct community; often contrasted with dialect. 2a. A system of signs, symbols, gestures, or rules used in communicating: the language of algebra. b. Computer Science A system of symbols and rules used for communication with or between computers [emphasis added]. 3. Body language; kinesics. 4. The special vocabulary and usages of a scientific, professional, or other group: “his total mastery of screen language—camera placement, editing—and his handling of actors” (Jack Kroll). 5. A characteristic style of speech or writing: Shakespearean language. 6. A particular manner of expression: profane language; persuasive language. 7. The manner or means of communication between living creatures other than humans: the language of dolphins. 8. Verbal communication as a subject of study. 9. The wording of a legal document or statute as distinct from the spirit.

Apparently just about any form of information exchange, with or without the use of a literal tongue, can be a language so long as sender and receiver agree on a protocol.  Now, according to my way of thinking, that incudes every form of expression except modern art.  But then, at a typical exhibition, I may be merely a defective receiver surrounded by exceptionally gifted senders using languages that I am unable to fathom.