System Development Corporation

The System Development Corporation was a US information technology firm, 1957-1987.

The System Development Corporation (SDC) grew out of the Rand Corporation's System Research Laboratory (a US Air Force think-tank) and a MIT Lincoln Labs project - SAGE(Semi-Automatic Ground Environment), an air defense system. SAGE was the "first computer-based, real-time, online, manmachine system" and "it revolutionized the information industry by spanning the prehistoric computer era of serial batch processing and the modern world of interactive systems." (Baum, 1981, p. 20).³

The convergence of the two projects came when the Rand Corporation agreed to provide the software programming for SAGE in 1955. Starting with only five Rand programmers, the SAGE project and staff grew quickly and soon totaled more people than the RAND Corporation itself. The project became the independent System Development Division. It's role, size and future prospects as a systems designer conflicted with Rand's charter as a researcher for the USAF, so in 1956 a new, non-profit corporation was formed: the System Development Corporation (SDC).

In 1981 SDC became an independent Burroughs Corporation subsidiary and in 1987, an enlarged Burroughs Corporation was renamed UNISYS Corporation and SDC was folded in to UNISYS. Proceeds from the sale to Burroughs were used to create a new non-profit, the System Development Foundation, which funded research, much of it at Stanford University, before being closed in the 1980s.

Further reading

• Baum, Claude. The System Builders: The story of SDC. Santa Monica, CA: System Development Corp., 1981.

Papers

Stepka, S. A., & Gasser, C. (1997). Burroughs Corporation records. System Development Corporation records [Finding aid]. https://archives.lib.umn.edu/repositories/3/resources/201

West Virginia Secretary of State. (n.d.). Business organization detail: UNISYS Corporation. Retrieved September 15, 2023, from https://apps.sos.wv.gov/business/corporations/organization.aspx?org=115438

University of Minnesota, Charles Babbage Institute. 1946-1982. 23 cu. ft. Collection contains the records of the System Development Corporation, including a history file with information about the RAND Corporation, the System Development Division, and the System Development Corporation. It also contains correspondence, meetings and minutes, symposiums and presentations, product literature, technical literature, reports on systems engineering, systems design, human-computer interaction, and user interfaces, and a subject file. [1]

• Stanford University, Department of Special Collections. 1957-1993. 170 linear feet.

System Development Foundation executive records, research program files, financial files, administrative files, subject files of people and places, other materials [2]