Early Development
The Southern Pacific Railroad was ahead of the pack in its embracing of technology. In the early 1960s it developed a computer system called “Total Operations Processing System”, or TOPS. The purpose was to take all the paperwork associated with a locomotive or railroad car - its maintenance history, its allocation to division and depot and duty, its status, its location, and much more - and keep it in computer form, constantly updated by terminals at every maintenance facility. On paper, this information was difficult to keep track of, difficult to keep up to date, and difficult to query, requiring many telephone calls. Computerizing this information enabled a railroad to keep better track of its assets, and to utilize them better.
In order to offset the development costs of the system, Southern Pacific sold it to other railroads. A number of American railroads took to the system, as did many others around the world.
Read more about this topic: TOPS
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