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problems in which machine words have a logical rather than numerical
meaning, however, FORTRAN is less satisfactory, and it may fail entirely
to express some such problems. Nevertheless many logical operations
not directly expressible in the FORTRAN language can be obtained by
making use of provisions for incorporating library routines.
21
The power of the FORTRAN language for scientifi c computation can
be clearly demonstrated by a simple real-world example. The mathemati-
cal expression described by the function
Zi
()
=
AX
2
+
BY
could be
i
i
i
i
written in FORTRAN using the following syntax:
Z(I) = SQRTF(A(I)*X(I)**2 + B(I)*Y(I))
Using such straightforward algorithmic expressions, a programmer could
write extremely sophisticated programs with relatively little training and
experience.
22
Although greeted initially with skepticism, the FORTRAN project was
enormously successful in the long term. A report on FORTRAN usage
written just one year after the fi rst release of the language indicated that
“over half [of the 26 installations of the 704] used FORTRAN for more
than half of their problems.”
23
By the end of 1958, IBM produced
FORTRAN systems for its 709 and 650 machines. As early as January
1961 Remington Rand UNIVAC became the fi rst non-IBM manufacturer
to provide FORTRAN, and by 1963 a version of the FORTRAN com-
piler was available for almost every computer then in existence.
24
The
language was updated substantially in 1958 and again in 1962. In 1962,
FORTRAN became the fi rst programming language to be standardized
through the American Standards Association, which further established
FORTRAN as an industrywide standard.
25
The academic community was an early and crucial supporter of
FORTRAN, contributing directly to its growing popularity. The
FORTRAN designers in general, and Backus in particular, were regular
participants in academic forums and conferences. Backus himself had
delivered a paper at the seminal Symposium on Automatic Programming
for Digital Computers hosted by the Offi ce of Naval Research in 1954.
One of his top priorities, after the compilation of the FORTRAN
Programmer's Reference Manual
(itself a model of scholarly elegance
and simplicity), was to publish an academically oriented article that
would introduce the new language to the scientifi c community.
26
Backus
would later become widely known throughout the academic community
as the codeveloper of the Backus-Naur Form, the notational system used
to describe most modern programming languages.
