When Switches Became Programs: Programming Languages and Telecommunications, 1965-1980
Gard Paulsen · IEEE Annals of the History of Computing · 2014
Beginning in the mid-1960s, electromechanical telecommunications switches were increasingly replaced by computer-controlled switches. Production and development of this equipment relied on the construction of its software. This software was shaped by practices, ideas, and ideals appropriated from the computer industry and computer science as much as by concerns and constraints of the telecommunications industry itself.