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).

A very complex series of negotiations resulted in two changes in July, 1969. The not-for-profit corporation would retain its tax-exempt status but take a new name: The System Development Foundation (SDF). It would own (and then sell) the shares of a new for-profit corporation that adopted the old name, System Development Corporation (sometimes referred to as "new SDC" or "SDC #2").

The old non-profit corporation, now named the System Development Foundation, gave grants to support research and closed in 1988.

The new for-profit corporation took over the name and the research and development work of the old System Development Corporation. In December 1980, a controlling interest in it was sold to the Burroughs Corporation and became an division of the Burroughs Corporation in 1981. In 1987, an enlarged Burroughs Corporation was renamed UNISYS Corporation and SDC was folded in to UNISYS.

Further reading

• Baum, Claude. The System Builders: The story of SDC. Santa Monica, CA: System Development Corp., 1981. On the history of SDC from its inception until the Burroughs merger.
• Stepka, S. A., & Gasser, C. (1997). Burroughs Corporation records. System Development Corporation records. University of Minnesota Libraries finding aid. [1]
• See Stanford University Libraries finding aid for detailed account of organizational changes [2]

Papers

• University of Minnesota. Libraries. 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. Finding aid [3]
• Stanford University, Department of Special Collections. System Development Foundation (Palo Alto, Calif.) Records, 1957-1993. Collection M05041957-1993. 170 linear feet. Finding aid [4]