In another post, I asked you all to send in your own entries to qualify for the “oldest living software” application. Needless to say, I got some great entries. I can now announce the winners.
Before I do, I should point out three Web sites that might be of interest to those of you that are exploring the ancient era of our industry. Dell in fact held its own oldest existing hardware contest a few years ago and uncovered a vintage Altair from 1976 that was since donated to The Computer Museum.
Two other Web sites are digibarn.com and oldversions.com. The former is Bruce Damer’s one-man computer museum, while the latter maintains links to older versions of some common software tools that may be preferred to the bloatware and feature-rich upgrades that have followed them.
Okay, enough scene-setting. The winner in my little contest is a general ledger accounting program that has been in use for nearly 25 years and was originally written for the Radio Shack TRS-80 in 1978 and was mass-marketed in 1979.