"Software" Over Time

The term “software” was first used in the Los Angeles TImes in 1972 and was used to describe a new operating system that would support multiple users on one computer. It was used in the New York Times in 1929, but it was used to describe clothing lines at JC Penney. The first use of “software in the Chicago Tribune was an advertisement which said that a company called Pres-Tech was starting a magazine called Software Age for computer programmers. The scholarly articles I found on the databases all referred to software in its computer and data processing context. 

Other than the New York Times article, all of the other references I researched referred to software as computer instructions, or data. It was interesting that JC Penney referred to its clothing lines as “software” and I am curious as to whether that was common at the time, or something unique to that one store.

While software, for the most part, has not changed meaning over time, I think it is important to point out that the word “software” encompasses so much more now than it did in these articles. Software in these articles mentioned processing the most basic data, including keystrokes on a keyboard. However, software now includes so many functions and abilities that people would never have believed possible during the times theses articles were published.