System Development Corporation

System Development Corporation, based in Los Angeles, California, was spun off from RAND Corporation in 1957. Originally, it started as the systems engineering group for the SAGE air defense ground sytem at RAND. After becoming independent from RAND, it went on to provide expertise in design, integration, and testing of large, complex, computer-controlled systems for the military.

In the 1960's, SDC developed the timesharing system for the AN/FSQ-32 mainframe computer for 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 MIT led to computer communication applications such as email. SDC also developed the JOVIAL programming language commonly used in real-time military systems.

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System Development Corporation

System Development Corporation Records