Here's a REALLY interesting piece of background about the "ancient" history of version control systems, this goes back even to the time BEFORE computing started, describing the processed that were used in industrial engineering (managing technical drawings and designs):
Of course none of those "version control" processes were automated, I guess there were "librarians", just people who archived versions of the drawings in "file" cabinets, just drawers with codes and numbers where they kept the old versions of the drawings.
When computing started with mainframes and punch cards (where a computer with the processing power of your contemporary PC or smartphone would be as big as your living room), "version" control used these same manual processes - as a programmer you would give your "deck" of cards to a librarian who would "archive" a version of it in the "library" (just a storage room with cabinets with drawers containing physical copies of the card decks, organized and numbered so that people could find and retrieve them).
I think that truly automated Source Control started after UNIX "mini computers" were invented, which did not use punch cards and printers anymore but keyboards and "terminals" (monitors). The oldest source control system was SCCS invented in 1972:
So, from that time onwards "source control" existed but I'm pretty sure that for less important programs people didn't bother with source control, they just dumped backups of their "spaghetti code" programmed in dBase III Plus or whatever on a 360Kb floppy disk and called it a day :-) .... source control was probably just for the "high end".
Around 1984 Microsoft introduced "SourceSafe" and I think from then on source control really became "mainstream". Then CVS came (better than SourceSafe), SVN came (better than CVS), then GIT came (WAY better than all the others), and the rest is history :-)
Document control processes are still used to today to control versions, access and write access. I've even seen such implemented as part of ISO90001 compliance in industry in recent years
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Here's a REALLY interesting piece of background about the "ancient" history of version control systems, this goes back even to the time BEFORE computing started, describing the processed that were used in industrial engineering (managing technical drawings and designs):
red-gate.com/blog/database-devops/...
Of course none of those "version control" processes were automated, I guess there were "librarians", just people who archived versions of the drawings in "file" cabinets, just drawers with codes and numbers where they kept the old versions of the drawings.
When computing started with mainframes and punch cards (where a computer with the processing power of your contemporary PC or smartphone would be as big as your living room), "version" control used these same manual processes - as a programmer you would give your "deck" of cards to a librarian who would "archive" a version of it in the "library" (just a storage room with cabinets with drawers containing physical copies of the card decks, organized and numbered so that people could find and retrieve them).
I think that truly automated Source Control started after UNIX "mini computers" were invented, which did not use punch cards and printers anymore but keyboards and "terminals" (monitors). The oldest source control system was SCCS invented in 1972:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code_...
None of this was networked or multi-user, it must have been clumsy and difficult to use, here you can read about how laborious it was to use it:
ericsink.com/vcbe/html/author_back...
So, from that time onwards "source control" existed but I'm pretty sure that for less important programs people didn't bother with source control, they just dumped backups of their "spaghetti code" programmed in dBase III Plus or whatever on a 360Kb floppy disk and called it a day :-) .... source control was probably just for the "high end".
Around 1984 Microsoft introduced "SourceSafe" and I think from then on source control really became "mainstream". Then CVS came (better than SourceSafe), SVN came (better than CVS), then GIT came (WAY better than all the others), and the rest is history :-)
Document control processes are still used to today to control versions, access and write access. I've even seen such implemented as part of ISO90001 compliance in industry in recent years