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Technology and Culture 45.2 (2004) 447-448



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From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry. By Martin Campbell-Kelly. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. Pp. xiv+372. $29.95.

This book is sorely needed in the history of computing, as a glance at the last twenty or so bibliographies published as a part of this journal reveals. [End Page 447] From many historians of computing, institutional histories and histories of hardware are all one gets. True, there has been some attempt at rebalancing the field: there is a journal about software history (on-line, of course); a conference, mentioned in this book and at which the author, Martin Campbell-Kelly, spoke; and an institute devoted to the history of software. Still, the field as a whole has been confusing and unstructured. Now along comes Campbell-Kelly's book, in which the first chapter is devoted to building a taxonomy for the software industry.

Campbell-Kelly actually follows his own outline, devoting several chapters each to software contractors, corporate software products, and mass-market software, and provides a good chronological model. He describes how the software industry began, with big projects spinning off contractor firms. He traces the growth of software products as they moved from gratis loss leaders to a burgeoning industry with IBM's "unbundling" decision in 1970, which meant that software no longer would be delivered free with large computers. He addresses both the thinking behind and the result of this momentous decision. He finishes with a few chapters on mass-market software. Many IBM-clone systems now bundle software in their purchase price, an odd circle back to earlier days, the major difference being that the cost of the software is better known. Campell-Kelly ends with the game industry (hence the second reference in the title), encyclopedias online (to illustrate the growth of CD-ROM reader hardware), and financial packages. There are a couple of surprises. For one, Microsoft, everyone's favorite monopolistic punching bag, represents only 10 percent of the software shipped.

Those familiar with Campbell-Kelly's previous work—particularly his The Computer with William Aspray—will recognize his easy, readable style here. This book is equal to Paul Cerruzi's A History of Modern Computing, another in the MIT series on the History of Computing. Four of the seventeen books in this series are biographical, some are a mixture of hardware and software, but Campbell-Kelly's is the only book solely about software. There is no doubt that it breaks new ground.

This is a book for the serious student of the history of computing who wants a well-organized study of software history. It is also suitable as a textbook for upper-division and early graduate courses.


Dr. Tomayko is teaching professor in computer science and an adjunct professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He has written and taught extensively on the history of computing.
Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer.


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