1950 to 1959: Starting the Ascent of Digital Computers and Software - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 88

In 1958, a researcher named Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments demonstrated a
working integrated circuit. This idea was patented in 1959 and was soon used by
the U.S. Air Force. In 2000, Kilby won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his inven-
tion of the integrated circuit.
Suffice it to say that without transistors and integrated circuits, none of the
tiny computerized electronic devices that are common today would be possible.
Without transistors and integrated circuits, software would probably be a small
niche industry that supported a few dozen mainframe computers that use vacuum
tubes. Neither personal computers nor embedded devices would be possible
without low-power microscopic transistors and integrated circuits.
In 1958, a mathematician and statistician from Bell Labs named John Wilder
Tukey used the word “software” in a paper. This was in the context of being a sep-
arate entity from “hardware.” This is the first known use of the word “software”
in a computer context.
Also in 1958, the first local computer was built in mainland China. It was a
vacuum tube computer called the 901, and it was constructed by the Institute of
Military Engineering at the University of Harbin.
Programming Languages of the 1950s
Three key high-level programming languages were developed in the mid-1950s
and their usage expanded during the 1960s: FORTRAN in 1955, LISP in 1958,
and COBOL in 1959. Ideas and seeds for other languages such as ALGOL also
started prior to 1960. However, for much of the decade, assembly language was
the most common language in use.
COBOL stands for “common business-oriented language.” FORTRAN stands
for “formula translator.” LISP's name is derived from list processing. These names
reflect the fact that these new languages were becoming specialized for math, busi-
ness, or other kinds of problems.
While COBOL, LISP, and FORTRAN were developed in the United States,
dozens of other languages were developed in other countries and had different
names, even though some were variations on older languages. ALGOL was deve-
loped jointly between U.S. and European researchers.
Not only do languages have many dialects or variations, but they also change
and add features over time. For example, there were ALGOL versions called
ALGOL 58, ALGOL 60, and ALGOL 68 and another revision in 1973. There are