What was the first computerized decision support system (DSS)?
by Daniel J. Power Editor, DSSResources.COM There is not a simple, indisputable answer to this question. Some would argue Scott-Morton’s Management Decision System (MDS) or the UNIVAC application used to forecast the 1952 U.S. Presidential election was the first DSS. Management Scientists might argue Dantzig and Orchard-Hays’s Linear programming software was the first DSS. Others cite JOSS and NLS. My current view is that the U.S. SAGE air-defense command and control system was probably the first “real” computerized, data-driven decision support system (DSS). Let’s review these systems. 1952 CBS election forecasting system On election day November 4, 1952, a computer application was used to assist in predicting the U.S. Presidential voting results. The fifth UNIVAC computer built was programmed by Remington-Rand (UNIVAC division) staff to analyze the partial results in order to anticipate the outcome. That evening “only a few minutes after the East Coast election booths closed that the
