Category: industry
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Computers installed in the UK during the 1960s
The first commercially produced digital computer, the UNIVAC I, became available in 1951, and by 1961 the exponential annual growth in the number of computers installed was well underway (it may have been earlier, but earlier data is sparse). For the UK, detailed annual installation data is listed in the paper: The Spread of Computer…
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Chinese research in software engineering
China and the Future of Science is the title of a recent article on the blog The Scholar’s Stage. In a series of posts the author, Tanner Greer, has been discussing how Chairman Xi and the Chinese central committee have reoriented the party towards a new goal. In 2026, the aim of China’s communist enterprise…
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1970s: the founding decade of software reliability research
Reliability research is a worthwhile investment for very large organizations that fund the development of many major mission-critical software systems, where reliability is essential. In the 1970s, the US Air Force’s Rome Air Development Center probably funded most of the evidence-based software research carried out in the previous century. In the 1980s, Rome fell, and…