Software in History: From Punch Cards to Modern Computer Programs
When you think about software, you
likely try to visualize something that is highly intangible, such as the
information stored on your “cloud” or a program saved on your hard
drive that you can’t see. And if we are considering only software from
2012, you are correct. Software has indeed been so far removed from
“hardware” that it might more accurately be deemed “noware.”
But software wasn’t always this way. As
you’re about to see, technology has come a long way. The earliest
manifestations of software used for information storage would probably
be considered “hardware” today. By older standards, however, software
did indeed start out as hardware that was simply “softer.” Let’s take a
look at how this was the case.
Software in Ancient Babylon?
If your idea of “software” could loosely
be defined as “computing,” then there have been devices like that for a
long, long time. Case in point: the abacus. The world’s first-known
calculator, the abacus was essentially a counting frame that allowed you
to perform calculations by sliding beans up and down a stick. Many
historians believe this invention was probably developed by the ancient
Babylonians. Later, the Chinese abacus (also known as the “suanpan”)
would become the most widely-used form of calculation in the world
before the calculator itself.
If you tend to think of those devices as
early examples of computing hardware and not software, then the story
changes drastically. Modern computing relies on a number of concepts
that were developed over millennia. For example, the use of zero as a
number in mathematics was first pioneered in ancient India – that led us
to the present state of software. But we can look at software as a function of hardware if you want the real story of its development throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
Was the First Software Actually Paper?
Our concept of software still relies
somewhat on the hardware that delivers it; throughout the 1990s, for
example, you’d be hard-pressed to find software that wasn’t available on
a floppy disk that could be inserted into the computer. Software
started out as a similar concept to punch-cards – printed on paper or
card stock – and would be used to input certain information into a
computer. The computer could read which variables were punched out on
the cards and then record the information. The idea of “punching out” at
work is really quite similar.
ventually, the interface of the
computers themselves grew more sophisticated, allowing software
engineers to develop software on and in the computer themselves.
Throughout the 1970s and surrounding years, software engineering was
actually considered a troubled concept because of the many problems
software would face. For example, poor software for radiotherapy
machines could endanger peoples’ lives.
Over time software became a much more
predictable process, and its consistency increased. The arrival of the
Internet also heralded a new era for easily-shareable software that has
led us to the wide-ranging world of software applications that we use
today. Learn more about current technologies, web news & social
media news update here Geeky Edge .
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