The exact history of API thanks to which you will learn what an application programming interface API is, and learn about the origins of this term. Check how the API definition has evolved since 1989 when the first API was created, and why it is believed that the first foundations for API were laid in 1968.
Published in · 6 min read · Jul 20, 2022
Let’s go back about 80 years because the history of API started with the fact that in the beginning there was a cabinet and catalogue in it
Maurice Wilkes and David Wheeler were British computer scientists who in the 1940s had been working on a modular software library for the von Neumann-based EDSAC computer. During this process they created what we would call today the first API documentation. Even though this documentation differed technically and visually from modern API documentations, most of the historians of technology consider it a kind of prototype.
How did it look like? Wilkes and Wheeler stored the subroutines of their software modular library in the form of perforated paper tape that they kept in a filing cabinet. In the same cabinet there was also a library catalogue — notes about each program and instructions how to use them. In other words, there was some sort of a guidebook in the Wilkes and Wheeler catalogue that instructed the programmer on how to use the program they needed, and more precisely, how to request exactly the concrete part of it.
The first official specification of Wilkes and Wheeler software appeared in the book by Wilkes and Wheeler, The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer, which was published in 1951. You can read the full book HERE.
For this reason Maurice Wilkes and David Wheeler are sometimes considered API precursors, but it is not entirely clear to whom exactly the merit for the invention of API can be credited. It is worth mentioning that these two did not call their interface the term “API” then, because the official API as a term of the application programming interface appeared a little later in the 60s and 70s of the 20th century.
History of API 1968–1999 — developing definition
API was first described in scientific literature in 1968 in the article Data structures and techniques for remote computer graphics by Ira W. Cotton and Frank S. Greatorex, which was presented at the AFIPS (American Federation of Information Processing Societes) conference. You can read the article HERE.
A few years later in 1974, the term “API” was introduced to the field of databases in The Relational and Network Approaches: Comparison of the Application Programming Interface by CJ Date, and thus the API became part of the ANSI / SPARC architecture (American National Standards Institute / Standards Planning And Requirements Committee) for database management systems. You can read the article HERE.
This event caused a kind of technological avalanche and led to the emergence of more and more APIs that supported all programming languages. The result is the definition of API from 1990 made by Carl Malamud:
“API = a set of services available to a programmer for performing certain tasks”
The next stage of API evolution as a web-based application programming interface was presented by Roy Fielding in his PhD dissertation Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures at the University of California in 2000. You can read this dissertation HERE.
Fielding contrasted the new thinking about API, understood as a Web Application Programming Interfaces or WebAPI, with the traditional concept, i.e. API based on a library. Fielding’s dissertation is a valuable source of knowledge about APIs used for parsing XML and JSON files that gained widespread commercial use in the early 21st century.
The first modern API put to use was the Salesforce API, which was launched by this company during the IDG Demo conference on February 7, 2000.
In 2001, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee, API profited another value — a network of semantic links, thanks to which it is possible to transform API into an open data interface. All this thanks to the data openness levels, which we wrote about in a separate article HERE.
An application programming interface API is a set of rules that define how applications can communicate with each other. API enables this communication by linking one application with another. Application programming interface communicates by means of requests to perform standard database functions, i.e. create, read, update or delete records in a given source.
For most non-programmers, answering the question of what an API is may be sometimes a little bit confusing.
To understand what an API is (if you’re not a developer), you can imagine that it is some sort of menu in a restaurant where you will find the names of food and their descriptions. You request via API selected dishes from the source (which will be kitchen), and then it will be delivered directly to your table.
You can also compare the API to a river, a phone call, or a two-ended pipe.
The users of the application programming interface are both programmers who, thanks to the API, can easily read data from servers, and companies that, for example, obtain business data from open business registers directly into their CRM or ERP system or they just want want to have access to data from another source in one system — this connection is possible thanks to API. HERE you can read about 10 features of a good API. A well and precisely designed API has a chance to live forever, which you will learn more about in our article: API Lifecycle. Batteries not included cause no needed.
But the history of API is also the history of all our comforts. Thanks to the API, when you insert a credit card into an ATM, you can view your current account balance. If you want to learn more about the use of API in banking, see our article about open banking in Poland, which you can find HERE.
We have already explained what API is, now it’s time to learn some examples of its use. Nowadays, APIs are widely used to exchange all kinds of data online.
The possibilities of using the API are basically endless, but we can distinguish several main areas of use of the application programming interface:
- A private API application programming interface that is intended for internal use only. It can be an API at the input or output (API input / output), which will connect two microservices in one company in different departments.
- API that can be used by selected partners — as an example, Uber can provide access to ordering vehicles directly from the application via API.
- Open API — fully accessible to everyone. On GitHub, which is a web hosting service dedicated to development projects, you can find open APIs from around the world related to weather, food, geolocation and maths. Among them are, for example, API NASA, Facebook and OLX Poland.
- API that is made available to third companies for faster product development — widely used among giants of various sectors. However, for such cooperation to be fully secure, you need APIM, i.e. an API Management tool. Here you can read, for example, about the very good Axway Amplify tool.
- Business API (for example with economic information provided by Transparent Data) — a commercial API with data that comes from open business registers.
We encourage you to familiarise yourself with Transparent Data’s offer. More information about the API provider KRS, CEIDG, REGON and many other registers can be found at:
