FORTRAN
FORTRAN, short for "FORmula TRANslating System," is one of the earliest high-level programming languages, developed in the early 1950s by John Backus and a team at IBM. The language was designed to facilitate scientific programming, particularly in fields requiring complex computations such as matrix algebra, linear programming, and differential equations. The first compiler, FORTRAN I, was completed in 1957 and introduced key programming concepts like variables, arrays, and functions, laying the groundwork for subsequent versions.
Over the years, FORTRAN evolved through various iterations, with FORTRAN II allowing separate compilation of program and subprogram modules, while FORTRAN IV became the standard version for a decade. Despite some limitations, such as the limited feature set of FORTRAN III, the language's user-friendly design demonstrated that high-level programming could generate efficient machine code. As a result, FORTRAN significantly influenced other programming languages developed in the 1950s, including ALGOL and COBOL. Today, FORTRAN remains relevant, particularly in scientific and engineering applications, reflecting its long-standing legacy in the computing world.
FORTRAN
Identification First popular high-level computer programming language
Date Designed in 1954
Before the development of the FORTRAN (Formula Translating System) compiler, most programming was done in machine or assembly language to generate small efficient code modules since computers were slow and had little memory. The first FORTRAN compiler produced code that was almost as efficient as that written in machine language and demonstrated that programming in a high-level language was feasible.
In 1953, John Backus and a team of programmers from International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) started a project to develop a high-level language for its 700 series of computers. By 1954, the name FORTRAN was adopted as an abbreviation for IBM’s FORmula TRANslating System. The FORTRAN I compiler was developed in 1957 for the IBM 704 computer. It had most of the features of later FORTRAN compilers, including variables, arrays, and functions. FORTRAN was primarily developed to support scientific programming with applications coming from areas such as matrix algebra, linear programming, and differential equations.
FORTRAN II added the ability to compile program and subprogram modules separately, which was a major addition to the FORTRAN language. FORTRAN III added few new features and was never released to the public. FORTRAN IV was developed from 1958 to 1961 and was the standard version of FORTRAN for the next ten years.
Impact
FORTRAN demonstrated that it was possible to have a user-friendly, high-level language that generated efficient machine code. The other compilers of the 1950’s, such as ALGOL and COBOL , leaned heavily on the concepts of Backus’s FORTRAN compiler.
Bibliography
Backus, John. “ENIAC: The History of FORTRAN I, II, and III.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 20, no. 4 (1998): 68-78. Complete description of the development of FORTRAN.
Sammet, Jean. Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1969. Excellent overview of FORTRAN with historical comments.