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Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce - Integrated
Circuit
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By
Mary
Bellis
"I really didn't know what the hell
I wanted to do with my life...I said no, I couldn't. I looked sloppy and
disheveled. But she insisted and so I did. I took a test and did OK." -
John Backus on interviewing for IBM.
FORTRAN or formula translation, the
first high level programming language, was invented by John Backus for
IBM, in 1954, and released commercially, in 1957. It is still used today
for programming scientific and mathematical applications. Fortran began
as a digital code interpreter for the IBM
701 and was originally named Speedcoding. John Backus wanted a programming
language closer to human language, which is the definition of a high level
language, other high language programs include Ada, Algol, BASIC, COBOL,
C, C++, LISP, Pascal, and Prolog.
The first generation of codes used
to program a computer, was called machine language or machine code, it
is the only language a computer really understands, a sequence of 0s and
1s that the computer's controls interprets as instructions, electrically.
The second generation of code was called assembly language, assembly language
turns the sequences of 0s and 1s into human words like 'add'. Assembly
language is always translated back into machine code by programs called
assemblers.
The third generation of code, was
called high level language or HLL, which has human sounding words and syntax
(like words in a sentence). In order for the computer to understand any
HLL, a compiler translates the high level language into either assembly
language or machine code. All programming languages need to be eventually
translated into machine code for a computer to use the instructions they
contain.
John Backus headed the IBM team of
researchers, at the Watson Scientific Laboratory, that invented Fortran.
On the IBM
team were the notable names of scientists like; Sheldon F. Best, Harlan
Herrick (Harlan Herrick ran the first successful fortran program), Peter
Sheridan, Roy Nutt, Robert Nelson, Irving Ziller, Richard Goldberg, Lois
Haibt and David Sayre. The IBM team didn't invent HLL or the idea of compiling
programming language into machine code, but Fortran was the first successful
HLL and the Fortran I compiler holds the record for translating code for
over 20 years. The first computer to run the first compiler was the IBM
704, which John Backus helped design.
Fortran is now over forty years old
and remains the top language in scientific and industrial programming,
of course it has constantly been updated. The invention of Fortran began
a $24 million dollar computer software industry and began the development
of other high level programming languages, Fortran has been used for programming
video games, air traffic control systems, payroll calculations, numerous
scientific and military applications and parallel computer research. John
Backus won the 1993 National Academy of Engineering's Charles Stark Draper
Prize, the highest national prize awarded in engineering, for the invention
of Fortran.
Next
Chapter > Jack
Kilby and Robert Noyce - The History of the Integrated Circuit
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