[Animats]

This wasn't the first electronic reservation system. It was preceded by the Magnetronic Reservisor, custom built for American Airlines by Teleregister. It didn't use general-purpose computers. It had magnetic drums and remote terminals, but it was not general purpose.

Teleregister built a range of such special-purpose systems, for several airlines, railroads, and air traffic control. General purpose CPUs were both too expensive and too slow for these jobs in the early 1950s. Using a general purpose computer for everything didn't really happen until the minicomputer era in the mid-1970s. SABRE had to wait until general-purpose computers got better.

It's interesting that transaction processing operating systems died out. Tandem's OS worked that way. But the run transaction program once and flush it approach is almost dead. Except, amusingly, for CGI programs, which are true use-once transaction programs, with an inefficient implementation.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4d-OFDs1hY

[2] https://s3data.computerhistory.org/brochures/teleregister.sp...