Software

Some time during 1958 (probably spring or summer) while running an operations research group at Shell Development Company in Houston, I went to an ACM conference. There I encountered Nicholas Metropolis, Director of the Institute for Computer Research at the University of Chicago. Years earlier, I had taken my first physics class from him. The result of our short conversation was that I received an offer for an appointment from the University of Chicago to the lofty position of Assistant Professor of applied mathematics in the Institute forComputer Research, commencing in fall 1958. This institute was a newly formed additionto the University of Chicago Research Institutes, which included the Enrico Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies and the Institute for the Study of Metals. We all shared the same building on Ellis Avenue on the southside of Chicago. People at the Institute for Computer Research were building a computer under a contract from the Atomic Energy Commission; it was probably the first transistorized computer to be built under AEC auspices. When I arrived, I found an old friend, David Jacobsohn, among the crew that was building the computer. He and others referred to the physical implementation as hardware, a term that bemused me because I regarded hardware as something to be bought in a hardware store.

Because I was the sole person in charge of providing the initial programming, I put a sign on my office door saying “Software Department” and thought that I was being incredibly clever.

I don’t think enough people saw my sign for me to claim that the use of the term radiated from my office door. Perhaps, as an independent inventor, I can claim priority.

(Added for the Medium version: I have learned since that John Tukey used the term in a public address about six months before the events described above.)