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Speedcoding
Speedcoding, Speedcode or SpeedCo was the first high-level programming language created for an IBM computer. The language was developed by John W. Backus in 1953 for the IBM 701 to support computation with floating point numbers. The idea arose from the difficulty of programming the IBM SSEC machine when Backus was hired to calculate astronomical positions in early 1950. The speedcoding system was an interpreter and focused on ease of use at the expense of system resources. It provided pseudo-instructions for common mathematical functions: logarithms, exponentiation, and trigonometric operations. The resident software analyzed pseudo-instructions one by one and called the appropriate subroutine. Speedcoding was also the first implementation of decimal input/output operations. Although it substantially reduced the effort of writing many jobs, the running time of a program that was written with the help of Speedcoding was usually ten to twenty times that of machine code. The ...
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John Backus
John Warner Backus (December 3, 1924 – March 17, 2007) was an American computer scientist. He led the team that invented and implemented FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level programming language, and was the inventor of the Backus–Naur form (BNF), a widely used notation to define syntaxes of formal languages. He later did research into the function-level programming paradigm, presenting his findings in his influential 1977 Turing Award lecture "Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?" The IEEE awarded Backus the W. W. McDowell Award in 1967 for the development of FORTRAN. He received the National Medal of Science in 1975 and the 1977 Turing Award "for profound, influential, and lasting contributions to the design of practical high-level programming systems, notably through his work on FORTRAN, and for publication of formal procedures for the specification of programming languages". John Backus retired in 1991. He died at his home in Ashland, Oregon ...
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PACT (compiler)
PACT was a series of compilers for the IBM 701 and IBM 704 scientific computers. Their development was conducted jointly by IBM and a committee of customers starting in 1954. PACT I was developed for the 701, and PACT IA for the 704. The emphasis in that early generation of compilers was minimization of the memory footprint Memory footprint refers to the amount of main memory that a program uses or references while running. The word footprint generally refers to the extent of physical dimensions that an object occupies, giving a sense of its size. In computing, t ..., because memory was a very expensive resource at the time. The word "compiler" was not in widespread use at the time, so most of the 1956 papers described it as an "(automatic) coding system", although the word compiler was also used in some papers. See also * Speedcoding, an interpreter for the 701 * FORTRAN * KOMPILER * SHARE References External links * {{Cite web , title=JACM: Vol 3, No 4 - series o ...
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IBM 701
The IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer and its first series production mainframe computer, which was announced to the public on May 21, 1952. It was designed and developed by Jerrier Haddad and Nathaniel Rochester and was based on the IAS machine at Princeton. The IBM 701 was the first computer in the IBM 700/7000 series, which were IBM’s high-end computers until the arrival of the IBM System/360 in 1964. The business-oriented sibling of the 701 was the IBM 702 and a lower-cost general-purpose sibling was the IBM 650, which gained fame as the first mass-produced computer. History IBM 701 competed with Remington Rand's UNIVAC 1103 in the scientific computation market. In early 1954, a committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested that the two machines be compared for the purpose of using them for a Joint Numerical Weather Prediction project. Based on the t ...
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Structured Programming
Structured programming is a programming paradigm aimed at improving the clarity, quality, and development time of a computer program by making specific disciplined use of the structured control flow constructs of selection ( if/then/else) and repetition ( while and for), block structures, and subroutines. It emerged in the late 1950s with the appearance of the ALGOL 58 and ALGOL 60 programming languages, with the latter including support for block structures. Contributing factors to its popularity and widespread acceptance, at first in academia and later among practitioners, include the discovery of what is now known as the structured program theorem in 1966, and the publication of the influential " Go To Statement Considered Harmful" open letter in 1968 by Dutch computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra, who coined the term "structured programming". Structured programming is most frequently used with deviations that allow for clearer programs in some particular cases, such as whe ...
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Machine Language
In computer programming, machine code is computer code consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). For conventional binary computers, machine code is the binaryOn nonbinary machines it is, e.g., a decimal representation. representation of a computer program that is actually read and interpreted by the computer. A program in machine code consists of a sequence of machine instructions (possibly interspersed with data). Each machine code instruction causes the CPU to perform a specific task. Examples of such tasks include: # Load a word from memory to a CPU register # Execute an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) operation on one or more registers or memory locations # Jump or skip to an instruction that is not the next one In general, each architecture family (e.g., x86, ARM) has its own instruction set architecture (ISA), and hence its own specific machine code language. There are exceptions, such as the V ...
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IBM Journal Of Research And Development
''IBM Journal of Research and Development'' is a former, peer-reviewed bimonthly scientific journal covering research on information systems. This Journal has ceased production in 2020. According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'' in 2019, the journal had an impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a type of journal ranking. Journals with higher impact factor values are considered more prestigious or important within their field. The Impact Factor of a journa ... of 1.27. IBM also published the ''IBM Systems Journal'' () starting in 1962; it ceased publication in 2008 and was absorbed in part by the ''IBM Journal of Research and Development''. References External links * English-language journals IBM Information systems journals {{science-journal-stub ...
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Short Code (computer Language)
Short Code was one of the first higher-level languages developed for an electronic computer. Unlike machine code, Short Code statements represented mathematic expressions rather than a machine instruction. Also known as automatic programming, the source code was not compiled but executed through an interpreter to simplify the programming process. The execution time was, naturally, much slower. History Short Code was proposed by John Mauchly in 1949 and originally known as Brief Code. William Schmitt implemented a version of Brief Code in 1949 for the BINAC computer, though it was never debugged and tested. The following year Schmitt implemented a new version of Brief Code for the UNIVAC I, where it was now known as Short Code (also Short Order Code). A revised version of Short Code was developed in 1952 for the Univac II by A. B. Tonik and J. R. Logan. While Short Code represented expressions, the representation itself was not direct and required a process ...
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Drum Memory
Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory. Many early computers, called drum computers or drum machines, used drum memory as the main working memory of the computer. Some drums were also used as Auxiliary memory, secondary storage as for example various IBM_drum_storage, IBM drum storage drives and the UNIVAC FASTRAND series of drums. Drums were displaced as primary computer memory by magnetic core memory, which offered a better balance of size, speed, cost, reliability and potential for further improvements. Drums were then replaced by hard disk drives for secondary storage, which were both less expensive and offered denser storage. The manufacturing of drums ceased in the 1970s. Technical design A drum memory or drum storage unit contained a large metal cylinder, coated on the outside surface with a ferromagnetic recording material. It could be ...
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Magnetic-tape Data Storage
Magnetic-tape data storage is a system for storing digital information on magnetic tape using digital recording. Tape was an important medium for primary data storage in early computers, typically using large open reels of 7-track, later 9-track tape. Modern magnetic tape is most commonly packaged in cartridges and cassettes, such as the widely supported Linear Tape-Open (LTO) and IBM 3592 series. The device that performs the writing or reading of data is called a tape drive. Autoloaders and tape libraries are often used to automate cartridge handling and exchange. Compatibility was important to enable transferring data. Tape data storage is now used more for system backup, data archive and data exchange. The low cost of tape has kept it viable for long-term storage and archive. Open reels Initially, magnetic tape for data storage was wound on reels. This standard for large computer systems persisted through the late 1980s, with steadily increasing capacity d ...
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IBM CPC
The IBM Card-Programmed Electronic Calculator or ''CPC'' was announced by IBM in May 1949. Later that year an improved machine, the CPC-II, was also announced. IBM's electronic (vacuum tube) calculators could perform multiple calculations, including division. The card-programmed calculators used fields on punched cards not to specify the actual operations to be performed on data, but which "microprogram" hard-coded onto the plugboard of the IBM 604 or 605 calculator machine; a set of cards produced different results when used with different plugboards. The units could be configured to retain up to 10 instructions in memory and perform them in a loop. The original CPC Calculator has the following units interconnected by cables: *Electronic Calculating Punch **IBM 604 with reader/punch unit IBM 521 *Accounting Machine **IBM 402 or **IBM 417 The CPC-II Calculator has the following units interconnected by cables: *Electronic Calculating Punch **IBM 605 with punch unit IBM 527 *Acco ...
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Poughkeepsie, New York
Poughkeepsie ( ) is a city within the Poughkeepsie (town), New York, Town of Poughkeepsie, New York (state), New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, New York, Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeepsie is in the Hudson Valley, Hudson River Valley region, midway between the core of the New York metropolitan area and the state capital of Albany, New York, Albany. It is a principal city of the Kiryas Joel–Poughkeepsie–Newburgh metropolitan area, Kiryas Joel–Poughkeepsie–Newburgh metropolitan area which belongs to the New York combined statistical area. It is served by the nearby Hudson Valley Regional Airport and Stewart International Airport in Orange County, New York. Poughkeepsie has been called "The Queen City of the Hudson". Originally part of New Netherland, it was settled in the 17th century by the Dutch and became New York State's second capital shortly after the American Revolution. It was chartered as a city in 1854. Major ...
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