[SIGCIS-Members] Fwd: software engineering

[Nathan Ensmenger]

> 
> On Feb 3, 2012, at 10:12 AM, Brian Randell wrote:
> 
> Prompted by a query from Professor Jochen Ludwig, I am seeking to find early uses of the term "software engineering".

[My first attempt at a reply seems to have been rejected.  My apologies if this is a repeat]


The earliest reference to the term "software engineering" that I have come across was in a September 17, 1961 ad placed in the New York Times by the RCA Data Systems Division  that advertises  "important engineering positions to be filled in .... advanced software development engineering."  

It is not clear what RCA meant by "software engineering" in this context, and they seem to apply the title "engineering" to all of their open positions: data systems engineering, information storage and retrieval engineering, data systems planning engineering, and, of course, advanced software development engineering.  This does not seem to be a deliberate attempt to shape a new discipline.  I have attached a PDF of the original ad.

There are other companies, such as GE (and, as Al Kossow notes, Honeywell) who adopted a similar engineering-oriented job taxonomy many years prior to the influential NATA conferences.


-Nathan

--
Nathan Ensmenger
School of Information
University of Texas at Austin
www.ischool.utexas.edu/~nathan/


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