I had to good fortune of seeing programmable logic devices (PLDs) evolve from a niche market to a mainstream product. PLDs were commercially introduced in 1975 but really took off in the 1980s. I joined Data I/O in March 1981 and was a founding member of the team that developed ABEL, a program at allowed engineers to specify and simulate PLDS.
Here is my collection of ABEL project documents
starting in 1981.
ABEL Project
History
Gerrit Barrere demonstrating ABEL 1.0 and the LogicPak in 1984.
Data I/O Brochures
and Photos