1950 to 1959: Starting the Ascent of Digital Computers and Software - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 93

Other Computer Business Implementations
The 1950s saw the creation of a number of other companies that would help to ex-
pand computers and software. Among these were Nixdorf in 1952, Burroughs in
1956, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1957, and Control Data Corpor-
ation (CDC), also in 1957. Remington Rand acquired the older Eckert-Mauchly
company, and it was renamed Univac in 1951.
Some of these same inventions began to find their way into consumer products.
In 1954, Regency marketed the first transistor radio. This was followed in 1955 by
the more famous Sony TR-55.
1957 witnessed the appearance of the Sony TR-63, the first pocket radio (the
TR-55 was too large to be carried in a pocket). This Sony radio pioneered modern
personal entertainment devices and expanded Sony into a major global corpora-
tion.
In the late 1950s, jet aircraft were added to commercial airline fleets. This fact,
combined with a growing economy, increased air traffic by more than 1,000%
between 1958 and 1977. With such heavy air traffic, it was becoming unsafe to fly
because air-traffic control systems were primitive in the 1950s.
In 1956, two planes collided over the Grand Canyon and 128 people were
killed. This spurred Congress to pass the Federal Aviation Act in 1958, which
created the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to oversee air-traffic control
throughout the United States. Computers were used experimentally for air-traffic
control in the late 1950s, but a true national, computerized air-traffic control sys-
tem would not arrive until the 1970s.
By coincidence in 1953, the president of American Airlines, C. R. Smith,
happened to sit next to an IBM salesman named R. Blair Smith. The two discussed
airline reservations and IBM was invited to visit American Airlines and suggest
cooperative action.
This chance encounter led to the cooperative development of the SABRE air-
line reservation system. It was started in 1959 but not completed until 1964. When
complete, SABRE was the largest software application system yet created. An art-
icle in Computer World on May 29, 2004, reported that SABRE had more than 64
applications totaling about 13,000,000 lines of code. That is roughly equivalent to
just over 100,000 function points.
Eventually, the SABRE system would come to be used by more than 350,000
travel agents, 400 airlines, 100,000 hotels, 25 car-rental companies, 50 railroads,