John A. Postley
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John Appel Postley (November 29, 1924, Scarsdale, New York – August 1, 2004, Los Angeles, California) is recognized as one of the founders of the computer software industry and creator of the first productized computer software.[1] He developed Mark IV, one of the earliest successful software products, along with the concept and business model of software as a product. He was also responsible for the creation of the first software users’ group and the first Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group. He was a serial entrepreneur before the term was common.
Background
John Postley graduated from UCLA in 1945 with a degree in mathematics. In 1948 he became the first employee of the UCLA Institute for Numerical Analysis where he helped to build SWAC (Standards Western Automatic Computer), the second ever computer (after ENIAC), which was dedicated on August 17, 1950.[2][3][4] Subsequently, Postley would hold posts at Northrop Corporation and Hughes Aircraft Company before moving to the RAND Corporation where he worked with John von Neumann, among many others. While at RAND, Postley became interested in the information-handling capabilities of computers, as opposed to their scientific uses.[5] He founded and ran, with Robert M. Hayes, Advanced Information Systems (AIS) which became part of the conglomerate, Electrada Corporation when it went public in June, 1960, to pursue opportunities in data processing, information sciences and non-numerical computing. AIS focused on the development of the Generalized Information Retrieval and Listing System (GIRLS) for the IBM 704[6][7]. In April, 1963, Postley sold AIS to Hughes Dynamics as both a funding strategy and to increase product reach. When Howard Hughes began to lose interest in the computer services market in 1964, Postley facilitated the sale of AIS with its renamed and evolved file-management product, Mark III, to Informatics General.
Changing the Paradigm
In 1967, Informatics began selling MARK IV, the first ever software product to be offered for sale, for the IBM System/360 and RCA Spectra 70 at a price of $30,000 to a market that was accustomed to buying hardware that included system software with custom built applications. Mark IV was the most successful product of the independent software industry from the beginning of the mainframe era[5][8] and remained highest revenue producing software product until it was surpassed by WordStar on PC DOS in 1984. It was the first software product to have cumulative sales of $1 million, $10 million, and later $100 million.
In the late 1960s, software was generally regarded as trivially easy to replicate but rarely was because of the specificity of each application. Informatics tried and failed to get a patent on Mark IV in the United States; however, it succeeded in doing so in Great Britain and Canada. Nevertheless, the patent process, as it pertained to software, was a mess. It was designed to protect tangible artifacts rather than "ideas." Whether or not computer programs were tangible was an open question. In 1964, the U.S. Copyright Office began to allow computer programs to be copyrighted, provided that the source code was published in human-readable form and deposited with the Copyright Office.[9] This action was followed by legislation that formalized the change. The intention of these actions was to make the unauthorized copying of software into intellectual property theft and, therefore, illegal. However, as the government would play no role in either investigation or enforcement, the net effect was that of removing most protections for software. This legislation was strongly supported by the leading hardware manufacturers of the time (IBM and the BUNCH), all of whom bundled software with their hardware. This was especially true of IBM with DB2 and this, along with their intensive lobbying in favor of weakening software protections, thereby putting software only vendors at a strategic disadvantage, may well have contributed to the antitrust investigation that began in 1967 and focused on, among other things, their practice of bundling.
Power to the Users
In 1959, Postley determined that there was a lot of non-scientific, business-type functionality that was common across applications that were being frequently recreated. His idea that it would be beneficial to get people together to discuss these issues and how to handle them let him to convene a conference at UCLA which was attended by over 500 people. One of the outcomes from that conference was the creation of the Special Interest Group on Business Data Processing (SIGBDP) in the Los Angeles chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), which at that time represented 10% of all ACM members. SIGBDP was the first ACM SIG and Postley served as the first Chairman of both the chapter SIG and the overall SIG.[10]
Almost a decade later, in 1967, to build community among Mark IV users Postley created the first software users' group, named the "IV League."[11]
Reboot
John Postley "retired" from Informatics in 1980. In retirement, he spent most of his time as an angel investor and business advisor. This retirement lasted for about three years before he saw history repeating itself. As it did with the System/360 and OS/360, IBM had created a new platform in the form of the IBM PC and PC DOS in September, 1992. Shortly after the launch of the IBM PC, the popular dBase II database language for CP/M was ported to the PC as dBASE III. Postley saw this dBase as more of a language for programmers rather than an application for end-users, analogous to the role of COBOL in the late 60's. When IBM announced the IBM XT with a built-in hard disk in late 1983, he saw a shift in power toward non-technical users and formed Postley Software to develop an easy-to-use database system for non-programmer end-users. DBS/Experience shipped in June, 1985.[12]
Books
- Computers and People. (1960) ASIN B0007ETUVE, McGraw Hill
References
- ^ "Mark IV: Evolution of the Software Product". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 20 (1): 43–50. March 1998. doi:10.1109/85.646208.
- ^ "National Bureau of Standards Western Automatic Computer (SWAC)" (PDF). Digital Computer Newsletter. Vol. 2, Num. 3: 3. December 1950.
{{cite journal}}:|volume=has extra text (help) - ^ "Documents about SWAC". www.bitsavers.org.
- ^ Rutland, David (1997). "THE SWAC: First Computer on the West Coast" (PDF). The Analytical Engine. 4 (1): 31–34.
- ^ a b Campbell-Kelly, Martin (2003). From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. pp. 103–104. ISBN 0-262-03303-8.
- ^ Johnson, Luanne (March 26, 1986). "Oral History of John Postley" (PDF). archive.computerhistory.org. p. 4. Retrieved 2018-12-29.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|dead-url=(help) - ^ Postley, J. A.; Buetell, T. D. (December 1962). "Generalized information retrieval and listing system". Datamation.
- ^ Haigh, Thomas (June 2006). "A veritable bucket of facts: Origins of the Database Management System". ACM SIGMOD Record. Vol. 35, Issue 2: 79 – via ACM DL.
{{cite journal}}:|volume=has extra text (help) - ^ Banzhaf, John. "Copyright Protection for Computer Programs." 64 Columbia Law Rev. 1274 (1964)
- ^ Johnson, Luanne (March 26, 1986). "Oral History of John Postley" (PDF). archive.computerhistory.org. p. 6.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|dead-url=(help) - ^ Blakeney, Susan (March 28, 1983). "Group Keeps Users From Feeling Left in Lurch". Computerworld. Retrieved October 9, 2019.
- ^ "New Products". InfoWorld. Vol. 7, No. 24: 26. June 1985.
{{cite journal}}:|volume=has extra text (help)
Category:History of computing Category:History of software Category:RAND Corporation people Category:Hughes Aircraft Company Category:Northrop aircraft Category:Information science