Timeline of array programming corporations

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This page shows the history of businesses strongly tied to APL or other array language implementation. Many other commercial vendors have implemented APL at some point.

By dialect

Here families of dialects are grouped together: IBM APL includes APL\360, APL.SV, and others; APL*PLUS includes APL+Win and APL64; and SHARP APL includes SAX.

Entries in parentheses indicate a change in ownership of the array language developer. Those marked with an asterisk indicate new employee-owned companies.

Year IBM, APL2 APL*PLUS SHARP APL Dyalog APL J K
1966 IBM
1970 STSC, IPSA
1976 STSC IPSA
1982 (Continental Telecom, Inc.)
1983 Dyadic Systems (Lynwood)
1987 (Reuters)
1988 (Hunting plc)
1990 (employee-owned) Iverson Software Inc.
1992 Manugistics Group, Inc.
1993 Soliton Incorporated* Kx Systems
1995 APL2000 (LEX2000)
1999 (Cognos)
2000 Jsoftware
2002 Dyalog Ltd.
2004 (Insight Systems and others)
2005 APLNow LLC*
2014 (First Derivatives)
2017 None
2019 Kx, Shakti
2021 Log-On Software

Business developments

  • 1911: IBM is founded
  • 1955: IBM hires Ken Iverson
  • 1966-76: IBM makes APL\360 available to academic users including Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Alberta, Syracuse University, and SUNY Binghamton
  • 1964: I.P. Sharp Associates (IPSA) is founded
  • 1968: IBM releases APL\360 as a Type-III library
  • 1969: STSC (Scientific Time Sharing Corporation until 1979) is formed
  • 1970: STSC and IPSA jointly offer APL*PLUS for time-sharing usage
  • 1976: Dyadic Systems, later to become Dyalog Ltd., is formed as an APL consulting company
  • 1976 (approx): IPSA separates its APL implementation from STSC, calling it SHARP APL
  • 1980: IPSA hires Ken Iverson, who leaves IBM
  • 1982: STSC is sold to Continental Telecom, Inc.
  • 1983: Dyadic Systems releases Dyalog APL
  • 1983: Dyadic Systems is sold to Lynwood Scientific Developments Limited
  • 1987: IPSA is sold to Reuters Group; Ken Iverson and others leave
  • 1988: Dyadic Systems is sold with owner Lynwood to Hunting plc
  • 1990: Iverson Software Inc. (later Jsoftware) is founded by Eric Iverson intending to sell SHARP APL
  • 1990: Dyadic Systems employees buy the company from Hunting plc
  • 1990: Iverson Software Inc. hires Ken Iverson and Roger Hui to work on J
  • 1992: STSC is renamed to Manugistics Group, Inc.
  • 1993: Kx Systems is founded by Arthur Whitney and Janet Lustgarten to commercialize K
  • 1993: Soliton Incorporated is formed by ex-IPSA employees to sell SAX
  • 1995: Manugistics sells APL*PLUS to LEX2000, creating APL2000 and the APL+ product family
  • 1999: APL2000 are owner LEX2000 are sold to Cognos
  • 2000: Iverson Software Inc. is renamed to Jsoftware
  • 2002: Dyadic Ltd. is separated from Dyadic Systems, which continutes the IBM hardware sales business started in 1986
  • 2004: Dyalog Ltd. is sold to a group including Insight Systems, an offshoot of Adaytum Software
  • 2005: APLNow LLC is formed by APL2000 employees, who buy the company's assets from Cognos
  • 2005: IPSA is shut down
  • 2014: Kx Systems sells a 65% share, making partner First Derivatives the majority owner (it becomes the full owner in 2018)
  • 2017 (approx): Soliton Incorporated withdraws SAX
  • 2019: Shakti is founded by Arthur Whitney and Janet Lustgarten
  • 2021: IBM withdraws support for APL2, transferring it to Log-On Software


APL development [edit]
Interface Session ∙ Typing glyphs (on Linux) ∙ Fonts ∙ Text editors
Publications Introductions ∙ Learning resources ∙ Simple examples ∙ Advanced examples ∙ Mnemonics ∙ ISO 8485:1989 ∙ ISO/IEC 13751:2001 ∙ A Dictionary of APL ∙ Case studies ∙ Documentation suites ∙ Books ∙ Papers ∙ Videos ∙ APL Quote Quad ∙ Vector journal ∙ Terminology (Chinese, German) ∙ Neural networks ∙ Error trapping with Dyalog APL (in forms)
Sharing code Backwards compatibility ∙ APLcart ∙ APLTree ∙ APL-Cation ∙ Dfns workspace ∙ Tatin ∙ Cider
Implementation Resources ∙ Open-source ∙ Magic function ∙ Performance ∙ APL hardware
Developers Timeline of corporations ∙ APL2000 ∙ Dyalog ∙ IBM ∙ IPSA ∙ STSC
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