System Development Corporation
| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Aerospace |
| Founded | 1955 |
| Headquarters | Santa Monica, California |
| Parent | Unisys |
System Development Corporation (SDC) was a computer software company based in Santa Monica, California. Founded in 1955, it is considered the first company of its kind.[1]
Contents
History[edit]
SDC began as the systems engineering group for the SAGE air-defense system at the RAND Corporation. RAND spun off the group in 1957 as a non-profit organization that provided expertise for the United States military in the design, integration, and testing of large, complex, computer-controlled systems. SDC became a for-profit corporation in 1969, and began to offer its services to all organizations rather than only to the American military.
Ownership[edit]
In 1980, SDC was sold by its board of directors to the Burroughs Corporation.
In 1986, Burroughs merged with the Sperry Corporation to form Unisys, and SDC was folded into Unisys Defense Systems.
In 1991, Unisys Defense Systems was renamed Paramax, a wholly owned subsidiary of Unisys, so that it could be spun off to reduce Unisys debt.[2]
In 1995, Unisys sold Paramax to the Loral Corporation, although a small portion of it, containing some projects that had originated in SDC, remained with Unisys.
In 1996, Loral sold Paramax to Lockheed Martin. In 1997, the Paramax business unit was separated from Lockheed Martin under the control of Frank Lanza (one of the original founders of Loral); it is now a subsidiary of L-3 Communications.
Software projects[edit]
In the 1960s, SDC developed the timesharing system for the AN/FSQ-32 mainframe computer for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The Q-32 was one of the first systems to support both multiple users and inter-computer communications. Experiments with a dedicated modem connection to the TX-2 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology led to computer communication applications such as e-mail. In the 1960s, SDC also developed the JOVIAL programming language and the Time-Shared Data Management System (TDMS),[3] an Inverted File Database System. Both were commonly used in real-time military systems.
References[edit]
- ^ See Campbell-Kelly, 2003, pp.36-41.
- ^ Defense & Security Intelligence & Analysis: IHS Jane's | IHS. Articles.janes.com. Retrieved on 2014-02-21.
- ^ Franks, E.W. (1966). "A Data Management System for Time-Shared File Processing Using a Cross-Index File and Self-Defining Entries" (PDF). IEEE Computer Society Proceedings-Spring Joint Computer Conference, 1966.
- Claude Baum, The System Builders: The Story of SDC, System Development Corp., Santa Monica, CA, 1981. ISBN 0-916368-02-5.
- Martin Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog. A History of the Software Industry. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003. ISBN 0-262-03303-8.
Further reading[edit]
- Records of the System Development Corporation at Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Includes a history file with information about the RAND Corporation, the System Development Division, and the System Development Corporation. Contains correspondence, meetings and minutes, symposiums and presentations, product literature, technical literature, reports on systems engineering, systems design, human-computer interaction, and user interfaces, and a subject file.
- Oral history interview with Jules I. Schwartz at Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. When Rand organized the System Development Corporation, Schwartz went to the new company. Schwartz describes his association with SAGE, his work on timesharing for the AN/FSQ-32 computer, computer networks, and control system projects (including TDMS).
- Oral history interview with Robert M. Fano at Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Fano discusses his move to computer science from information theory. Topics include System Development Corporation (SDC) among others.
