History of PSEs

1960s - First Organized Collections
1970s - Advent of Libraries, Plotting Packages, Statistical Packages, ``Prototype'' Interactive Packages,
1980s - Continued Development of Libraries, Emergence of Computational Packages, Emergence of Graphical Systems (data visualization)
1990s - Development of libraries and packages, Integration, inter-product links
2000+ - A ``Software Parts'' Industry

http://www.netlib.org/utk/people/JackDongarra/