Programming History Timeline Assignment part 1

Konrad Zuse begins work on Plankalkül (Plan Calculus), the first algorithmic programming language, with the goal of creating the theoretical preconditions for the solution of general problems

Fortran was invented by IBM in 1957. It is derived from Formula Translating System

Grace Hopper was born on December 9, 1906. She devloped COBOL. COBOL is a compiled computer programming language used in business, finance, and administrative system. She coined the phrase "debugging", which means to fix computer glitches.

The increasing number of users needing access to computers in the early 1960s leads to experiments in timesharing computer systems. Timesharing systems can support many users – sometimes hundreds – by sharing the computer with each user

ASCII — American Standard Code for Information Interchange — permits machines from different manufacturers to exchange data. The ASCII code consisted of 128 unique strings of ones and zeros. Each sequence represented a letter of the English alphabet, an Arabic numeral, an assortment of punctuation marks and symbols, or a function such as a carriage return

Seymour Papert designs LOGO as a computer language for children. Initially a drawing program, LOGO controlled the actions of a mechanical "turtle," which traced its path with pen on paper. Electronic turtles made their designs on a video display monitor.

The C programming language is released. Dennis Ritchie and his team created C based on the earlier language BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language) and soon after re-wrote the source code for Unix in C. As such, Unix was easily ported to other computers and spread swiftly. C is still widely used today.

Gary Kildall develops the first commercially successful operating system for microcomputers, CP/M. He and his wife established Intergalactic Digital Research (modestly dropping “Intergalactic” later) to market it. CP/M made it possible for one version of a program to run on a variety of computers built around eight-bit microprocessors. At one point Digital Research and Microsoft were approached by IBM about providing an operating system for its PC.

Harvard MBA candidate Dan Bricklin and programmer Bob Frankston develop VisiCalc, the program that turned the personal computer into a business machine. Initially developed for the Apple II, whose sales it boosted, VisiCalc automated the recalculation of spreadsheets, allowing users to ask “What if?” questions of their financial information.

Mitch Kapor develops Lotus 1-2-3, a software suite for the IBM PC based on a word processor, spreadsheet, and database. It quickly became the first “killer application” for the IBM PC, and contributed to the success of the PC in business.