Artifact Details

Title

A Dozen Precursors of Fortran, lecture by Don Knuth

Catalog Number

102622137

Type

Moving Image

Description

From abstract: "The history of a subject helps us not only to understand how the important ideas were born but also to appreciate the amount of progress that has been made. The history of programming languages is a striking example, because basic concepts that we now regard as self-evident were by no means obvious a priori; many years of hard work by brilliant and dedicated people were necessary before these basic principles were learned.

This talk will discuss contributions of Zuse (1945), Goldstine and von Neumann (1946), Curry (1948), Mauchly et al (1949), Burks (1950), Wheeler (1951), Rutishauser (1951), B÷hm (1951), Glennie (1952), Hopper et al (1953), Laning and Zierler (1953), Brooker (1954), Kaminynin and Ljubimskiy (1954), Ershov (1955), Grems and Porter (1955), Elsworth et al (1955), Blum (1956), Perlis et al (1956), Katz et al (1956), Bauer and Samelson (1956), Melahn et al (1956), as well as the prototype of FORTRAN developed by Backus et al from 1954 to 1957. At least a dozen of these efforts will be illustrated by showing how a particular procedure called the \TPK algorithm\ might have been coded at the time.

This talk will also celebrate the publication of the speaker's new book, Selected Papers on Computer Languages."

Date

2003-12-03

Credits

Knuth, Donald E.

Participants

Knuth, Donald E., speaker

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, California, United States

Platform

Windows Media Player

Duration

01:52:45

Format

Mini-DV

Copyright Holder

Computer History Museum

Category

Lecture

Collection Title

Fortran Archive

Series Title

Computer History Museum Speaker Series

Lot Number

X4882.2009