System Development Corporation (SDC) was a

computer software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

company based in

Santa Monica, California Santa Monica (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast (California), South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 United Sta ...

. Founded in 1955, it is considered the first company of its kind.

History

SDC began as the systems engineering group for the SAGE air-defense system at the

RAND Corporation The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financ ...

. In April 1955, the government contracted with RAND to help write software for the SAGE project. Within a few months, RAND's System Development Division had 500 employees developing SAGE applications. Within a year, the division had up to 1,000 employees. 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 A for-profit corporation is an organization which aims to earn profit through its operations and is concerned with its own interests, unlike those of the public (non-profit corporation). Structure A for-profit corporation is usually an organization ...

in 1969, and began to offer its services to all organizations rather than only to the American military. The first two systems that SDC produced were the SAGE system, written for the IBM AN/FSQ-7 -7computer, and the SAGE System Training Program STP written for the IBM 701 series of computers. The Q-7 was notable in that it was based on vacuum tubes. Intended as a duplex, with two computers for operational sites, there was a single Q-7 installed at the SDC complex in Santa Monica (2400 and 2500 Colorado; now occupied by the Water Garden). It was said that at the time the Q-7 building, a separate structure, required half of the air conditioning then used in the entire city of Santa Monica - perhaps in jest, but close to the truth. In late 1961 SDC became the Computer Program Integration Contractor PICfor the Air Force Satellite Control Network, and maintained that role for many years. As a part of that role, SDC wrote software for and delivered it to the AFSCN's then string of satellite tracking stations both in the US and abroad.

Ownership

In 1981, SDC was sold by its board of directors to the

Burroughs Corporation The Burroughs Corporation was a major American manufacturer of business equipment. The company was founded in 1886 as the American Arithmometer Company. In 1986, it merged with Sperry UNIVAC to form Unisys. The company's history paralleled man ...

. In 1986, Burroughs merged with the

Sperry Corporation Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the 20th century. Sperry ceased to exist in 1986 following a prolonged hostile takeover bid engineered by Burroug ...

to form

Unisys Unisys Corporation is an American multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. It provides digital workplace solutions, cloud, applications, and infrastructure solutions ...

, 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. In 1995, Unisys sold Paramax to the

Loral Corporation Loral Corporation was a defense contractor founded in 1948 in New York by William Lorenz and Leon Alpert as Loral Electronics Corporation. The company's name was taken from the first letters of each founder's surname. History Loral Corporation or ...

, 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 (who had been Loral's president and CEO); and became a subsidiary of

L-3 Communications L3 Technologies, formerly L-3 Communications Holdings, was an American company that supplied command and control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C3ISR) systems and products, avionics, ocean products, training ...

. In 2019, L-3 Communications merged with

Harris Corporation Harris Corporation was an American technology company, defense contractor, and information technology services provider that produced wireless equipment, tactical radios, electronic systems, night vision equipment and both terrestrial and spac ...

to form

L3Harris Technologies L3Harris Technologies (L3Harris) is an American technology company, defense contractor, and information technology service (economics), services provider that produces Command and control, C6ISR systems and products, wireless equipment, tactical ...

Software projects

In the 1960s, SDC developed the timesharing system for the AN/FSQ-32 (Q32) mainframe computer for

Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Ad ...

(ARPA). 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 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

led to computer communication applications such as

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

. In the 1960s, SDC also developed the JOVIAL programming language (Jules' Own Version of the International Algorithmic Language, for Jules Schwartz) and the Time-Shared Data Management System (TDMS), an inverted file

database system In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases span ...

. Both were commonly used in real-time military systems.

References

* Claude Baum, ''The System Builders: The Story of SDC'', System Development Corp., Santa Monica, CA, 1981. . * Robert Buderi, ''The Invention that Changed the World: How a small group of radar pioneers won the Second World War and launched a technological revolution''. Touchstone, New York, NY, 1998. * Martin Campbell-Kelly, ''From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog. A History of the Software Industry''. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003. .

External links

System Development Corporation history
{{Authority control Defunct software companies of the United States Lockheed Martin L3Harris Technologies

History

Ownership

Software projects

References

Further reading

External links