From 65438 to 0925, plessy, an American psychologist, designed the first automatic teaching machine, which was mainly used to test students' total animation, but it also included the application of principles such as letting students set their own rhythm, requiring students to respond positively and give immediate feedback. This machine can test and grade automatically. However, due to design problems and immature teaching conditions, the automatic teaching machine in plessy has little influence on the development of program teaching. Plessy's early contribution was well known until Skinner launched a new project teaching movement in the mid-1950s.

1930, J.Petersong designed a self-scoring and instant feedback device, which was later called "Chemo-Card". Although this chemistry board and plessy's teaching machine have aroused people's interest in automatic teaching technology, most educators and researchers are not ready to accept this progressive teaching concept. 1954, B.F. Skinner published a paper entitled "The Sustainability of Learning and the Art of Teaching", proposing that practical teaching machines could solve many teaching problems and promote the development of the program teaching movement at that time.

From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, program teaching developed rapidly. The characteristics of this period are shown in the following two aspects: first, various teaching machines came out one after another, from simple teaching machines without information display devices to teaching machines that can instantly extract information from thousands of frames like Norman A.Crowder; second, programming was widely developed and achieved positive results. At the end of 1960s, the program teaching movement began to decline.