February 26, 1957
FORTRAN formally published
IBMInternational Business Machines — a major computer and enterprise technology company since the early 20th century. and John Backus presented the first widely used high-level programming language at the Western Joint Computer Conference.
What it was for
FORTRAN was for scientific and engineering work on mainframes — writing formulas that a compiler turned into fast machine codeBinary instructions a CPU executes directly — what compilers and assemblers ultimately produce.. Typical uses: nuclear reactor simulation, weather models, structural analysis, and physics research. Much legacy HPC code is still FORTRAN today.
People
- John Backus — researcher
Companies
- IBM
Why it's here
FORTRAN is the starting point for compiler-based scientific and business computing at scale.
Why it mattered
It proved programmers could write in formulas and statements instead of machine codeBinary instructions a CPU executes directly — what compilers and assemblers ultimately produce., and it stayed in production for decades.
What it solved
Programming the IBMInternational Business Machines — a major computer and enterprise technology company since the early 20th century. 704 and similar machines required tedious low-level coding; FORTRAN automated translation to efficient machine programs.
Media
- ImageFORTRAN logo
Fortran-lang community, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Related
- First FORTRAN compiler deliveredApril 1957
- FORTRAN 77 standardizedApril 3, 1978