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machines with different arithmetic capabilities, eighteen decimal digits
were chosen as the maximum degree of precision supported. This par-
ticular degree of precision was chosen “for the simple reason that it was
dis
advantageous to every computer thought to be a potential candidate
for having a COBOL compiler.”
36
No particular manufacturer would
thus have an inherent advantage in terms of performance. In a similar
manner, provisions were made for the use of binary computers, despite
the fact that such machines were generally not considered appropriate
for business data processing. The decision to allow only a limited char-
acter set in statement defi nitions—using only those characters that were
physically available on almost all data-entry machines—was a self-
imposed constraint that had “an enormous infl uence on the syntax of
the language,” but was nevertheless considered essential to widespread
industry adoption. The use of such a minimal character set also pre-
vented the designers from using the sophisticated reference language
techniques that had so enamored theoretical computer scientists of the
ALGOL 58 specifi cation.
This dedication to the ideal of portability set the Short-Term
Committee at odds with some of its fellow members of CODASYL. In
October 1959, the Intermediate-Range Committee passed a motion
declaring that the FACT programming language—recently released by
the Honeywell Corporation—was a better language than that produced
by the Short-Range Committee and hence should form the basis of the
CBL.
37
Although many members of the Short-Range Committee agreed
that FACT was indeed a technically advanced and superior language,
they rejected any solution that was tied to any particular manufacturer.
In order to ensure that the CBL would be a truly
common
business lan-
guage, elegance and effi ciency had to be compromised for the sake of
readability and machine independence. Despite the opposition of the
Intermediate-Range Committee (and the Honeywell representatives), the
Executive Committee of CODASYL eventually agreed with the design
priorities advocated by the PDQ group.
The fi rst COBOL compilers were developed in 1960 by Remington
Rand UNIVAC and RCA. In December of that year, the two companies
hosted a dramatic demonstration of the cross-platform compatibility of
their individual compilers: the same COBOL program, with only the
ENVIRONMENT division needing to be modifi ed, was run successfully
on machines from both manufacturers. Although this was a compelling
demonstration of COBOL's potential, other manufacturers were slow to
develop their own COBOL compilers. Honeywell and IBM, for example,
