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I'm aware of many version control systems: CVS, SVN, TFS etc...

I've googled for the very first "revision control/version control system" and seen various conflicting answers.

When was source control invented? Who invented it? What was it called?

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Starter for 10: SCCS "was originally developed ... in 1972" – AakashM Jan 24 at 17:17
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It was actually invented multiple times, but they kept losing the source code. – Mathew Foscarini Jan 24 at 20:15
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It depends on how you define "source control", but IBM's IEBUPDTE dates back to 1962, and it was arguably the earliest VCS. – Ross Patterson Jan 25 at 5:24
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If versioning file systems can be assimilated to revision control, this dates back to the 1960's. – mouviciel Jan 25 at 8:18

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up vote 6 down vote accepted

Here is a pretty decent timeline of the major players in video form (no sound).

It suggests that SCCS was first, by a margin of about 9 years.

There is a lot missing off there though, as evidenced by this blog and the resulting comments.

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The original paper on SCCS mentions no other systems, and seems to indicate that it had to come up with terminology itself. From that source alone it looks as if there was no version control system before 1972/73. – Martijn Pieters Jan 24 at 18:12
Naming a source code control system "Source Code Control System" is indeed indication that it was the first instance of something that would become a software category later. – Ingo Jan 24 at 21:57

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