In 1953 John W. Backus (1924-2007) IBM scientist proposed the advanced programming language. He began work on a simple programming language that would in 1954 become the Mathematical Formula Translating System (FORTRAN). It was announced by IBM in 1957.
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John W. Backus |
FORTRAN has been the main language for scientific computing since the origin of computing. The first FORTRAN compiler was a milestone in the history of computing; at that time computers had very small memories, they were slow and had very primitive operating system.
FORTRAN quickly caught on among scientists and engineers; by 1958, half the machine instructions at sixty IBM installations were produced through FORTAN, rather than machine code.
In 1958 FORTRAN II (followed the same year by FORTRAN III) was a significant improvement; it added the capability for separate compilation of programme modules. Further development yielded FORTRAN, then FORTRAN-90, FORTRAN-95 and FORTRAN-2000.
The invention of FORTRAN programming by John Backus