What Happened on April 19th
april 19, 1957
First FORTRAN Program Runs
Researchers run the first FORTRAN program. Short for "FORmula TRANslator," FORTRAN enabled computer programmers ("coders," at the time) to work in a "high-level" language, greatly simplifying program writing. The first FORTRAN program (other than internal IBM testing) runs at Westinghouse, producing a missing comma diagnostic. A successful attempt followed.