Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
simple Englishlike commands, would be easier to use and understand
than existing scientifi c languages, and would provide machine-indepen-
dent compatibility: that is, the same program could be run on a wide
variety of hardware with little modifi cation.
Although this proposal originated in the ElectroData Division of the
Burroughs Corporation, from the beginning it had broad industrial and
governmental support. The director of data systems for the U.S.
Department of Defense readily agreed to sponsor a formal meeting on
the proposal, and his enthusiastic support indicates a widespread con-
temporary interest in business-oriented programming: “The Department
of Defense was pleased to undertake this project: in fact, we were embar-
rassed that the idea for such a common language had not had its origin
in Defense since we would benefi t so greatly from such a project.”
30
The fi rst meeting to discuss a CBL was held at the Pentagon on May
28-29, 1959. Attending the meeting were fi fteen offi cials from seven
government organizations; fi fteen representatives of the major computer
manufacturers (including Burroughs, GE, Honeywell, IBM, NCR,
Phillips, RCA, Remington Rand UNIVAC, Sylvania, and ICT); and
eleven users and consultants (signifi cantly, only one member of this last
group was from a university). Despite the diversity of the participants,
the meeting produced both consensus and a tangible plan of action. The
group not only decided that CBL was necessary and desirable but also
agreed on its basic characteristics: a problem-oriented, Englishlike syntax;
a focus on the ease of use rather than power or performance; and a
machine-independent design. Three committees were established, under
the auspices of a single Executive Committee of the Conference on
Data Systems Languages (CODASYL), to suggest short-term, intermedi-
ate, and long-range solutions, respectively. As it turned out, it was the
short-term committee that produced the most lasting and infl uential
proposals.
The original purpose of the Short-Range Committee was to evaluate
the strengths and weaknesses of existing automatic compilers, and rec-
ommend a “short term composite approach (good for the next year or
two) to a common business language for programming digital comput-
ers.”
31
There were three existing compiler systems that the committee
was particularly interested in considering: FLOW-MATIC, which had
been developed for Remington Rand UNIVAC by Grace Hopper (as an
outgrowth of her A-series algebraic and B-series business compilers), and
which was actually in use by customers at the time; AIMACO, developed
for the Air Force Air Materiel Command; and COMTRAN (soon to be
