Applied Data Research

Applied Data Research, Inc.
Founded1959
FounderMartin Goetz, Sherman Blumenthal, Ellwood Kauffman, Dave McFadden, Bernard Riskin, Robert Wickenden, and Stephen Wright
Defunct1986
FateAcquired
SuccessorAmeritech
Headquarters
Princeton, New Jersey
,
United States
Servicesindependent contract programming

Applied Data Research, Inc. (ADR), was a large software vendor from the 1960s until the mid-1980s. ADR is often described as "the first independent software vendor".[1]

Founded in 1959, ADR was originally a contract development company. ADR eventually built a series of its own products. ADR's widely used major packages included: Autoflow for automatic flowcharting, which is often cited as one of the first commercial software applications;[2] Roscoe, a remote job submission environment; MetaCOBOL, an extensible macro processor for the COBOL language; and The Librarian, for source-code management.

The company's original office was in a small office building along U.S. Route 206 in Princeton Township, New Jersey.[3] Later during the 1960s, they were part of a data center located on Route 206 across from Princeton Airport. The center was destroyed by fire in 1969 when a light plane crashed into it on approach to the airport, but there were no serious injuries among either the pilot or the workers in the building.[4] In 1980, the company moved to a facility further along Route 206, that was just north of Princeton in Montgomery Township, New Jersey.[5]

ADR's modest first office, at 759 State Road (U.S. Route 206) in Princeton
During the 1960s, ADR had a data center on this ground across Route 206 from Princeton Airport
During the 1980s, ADR was headquartered in this office complex off Route 206 north of Princeton – all these as seen in 2023
  1. ^ "Prerelational DBMS vendors — a quick overview". Software Memories. February 9, 2006. Retrieved August 5, 2011.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference wapo-patents was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Goetz, Martin A. (October 1961). "Letter to the Editor: Internal Sorting and External Merging". Journal of the ACM. 8 (4): 649–650. doi:10.1145/321088.321104. S2CID 3031867.
  4. ^ "Light Plane Hits Building in Princeton". Asbury Park Press. Associated Press. November 14, 1969. p. 2 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. ^ Ditzel, Herb (January 31, 1980). "Montgomery: barbecues, brooks before business". The Courier-News. Central New Jersey. p. D-11 – via Newspapers.com.