1970
Work related to the Software Understanding Machine ™ (SUM) was started by the future founder of Thinking Software, Inc. (TSI), Benjamin Shapiro, while being a student of High Naval Cadet Engineering College, St. Petersburg, Russia. There he formulated the new algorithmic language and published it in a paper titled "Formula of Algorithm".

1977
While graduating from the Electro-Technical Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia, Department of Computer Engineering, he continued this work as his Diploma thesis.

1979
After emigrating to US he started implementing his vision in a software system that later resulted in Software Understanding Machine ™ (SUM).

Following that and during many years of working as a computer software programmer and consultant Benjamin was constantly building upon and improving on the vision of the future implementation of this software system.

1995
Thinking Software Inc. (TSI) was formed.

1996
The first prototype of Software Understanding Machine ™ (SUM) was demonstrated for software written in FORTRAN programming language as a target language.  The technology was awarded the first US patent.

1997
A language independent technology of Software Understanding Machine ™ (SUM) was developed

1998
A prototype of SUM for the COBOL target programming language was demonstrated.
First International Patent was issued.

1999
SUM was further developed to operate in the distributed software environment.
New, Software Reliability oriented technology was developed based on SUM.
Patents issued in two more countries

2003
The original patent is allowed in Europe.  A second patent is allowed in US

2004
SUM Technology is introduced in the product "Software Understanding Machine® (SUM) for COBOL".

2008
The work on porting SUM technology to Java programming Language has started. 

Present
Starting from the 1999 the technological potential of Software Understanding Machine® (SUM) was recognized by leading thinkers of the most progressive software companies.  One of them addressed SUM as a “Holy Grail of Computing”.

Today, TSI has the foundation for the evolution of computer software - the platform independent technology of Software Understanding Machine® - that brings a new quality to software execution that improves applications reliability, simplifies software maintenance and allows for automated target reconfiguration.

The market and the applications for the Software Understanding Machine® are growing with every new software application, which are created every day by thousands. 

“All of the world’s programming community is working for us.  All SUM has to do is to decipher it”.