Surprisingly, programmable computers are older than copyright
law: Charles Babbage’s analytical engine of 1837 predates the
Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic
Works (1886). However, unlike the Convention, Babbage’s
mechanical contraption designed to perform mathematical
calculations never became a real-world success. Several special-
purpose machines, such as the Hollerith tabulating machine, did
sell on the market in the late 19th and early 20th century. The
first computers in the modern sense only became available in the
1950s, thanks to ground-breaking research by John von Neumann
and Alan Turing in particular. Companies such as IBM that
provided these computers as part of what we today would call
“solutions”: businesses were provided with specially-programmed
computers to support certain business activities. Customers
would pay for continued support and new programs as part of the
deal, but no one would consider buying or selling computer
programs by themselves.1 Users would get t