Programming systems and languages: a historical survey

Abstract

Twenty years ago, in 1943, there were no Electronic computers. Ten years ago, in 1953, a large number of Electronic calculators were in use, but the general purpose stored program electronic computer was still quite rare. The Coincident Current Magnetic Core memory which finally provided both reliability and speed at reasonable cost had only just been developed, and was still a laboratory device. A number of specially designed, mostly one of a kind, computers were in operation at Universities and government research centers. Commercially, a few Univac I computers had been delivered and were operating with great reliability at rather low speed. A few IBM 701's provided high speed but with very poor reliability. In 1953 most computing was being done by the Card-Programmed Calculator, an ingenious mating of an Electromechanical Accounting Machine with an Electronic Calculating Punch.