First came the Program, 1948. Then the Program Product, a program designed to be distributed to others than the author-generalized, documented, tested, maintained, 1950. Then the Program System, a collection of programs designed to work together-defined interfaces, system-integrated, system-tested, 1956. Then the Program System Product, combining the features, labors, and complexities of both,1963. Many ambitious projects were undertaken; many failed. Over-optimistic goals and schedules abounded. Sometime in this sequence software builders each recognized that building a software system project was about an order of magnitude more effort than just writing the component programs. Process and management techniques had to be devised. Originally, they were borrowed from the electrical and civil engineering disciplines. The discipline as such was born and named at the 1968 NATO Conference on Software Engineering. We identify some of the milestones in the ’50’s, 60’s, and 70’s.