IBM Laboratory Vienna was an IBM research laboratory based in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. The laboratory started with a group led by

Heinz Zemanek Heinz Zemanek (actually ''Heinrich Josef Zemanek'') (1 January 1920 – 16 July 2014) was an Austrian computer pioneer who led the development, from 1954 to 1958, of one of the first complete transistorised computers on the European continent. Th ...

that moved from the

Technische Hochschule A ''Technische Hochschule'' (, plural: ''Technische Hochschulen'', abbreviated ''TH'') is a type of university focusing on engineering sciences in Germany. Previously, it also existed in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands (), and Finland (, ). ...

(now the

Technical University of Vienna TU Wien (TUW; german: Technische Universität Wien; still known in English as the Vienna University of Technology from 1975–2014) is one of the major universities in Vienna, Austria. The university finds high international and domestic recogn ...

). Initially, the group worked on computer hardware projects. Later a

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...

for the ALGOL 60 programming language was produced. The group built on ideas of Calvin C. Elgot,

Peter Landin Peter John Landin (5 June 1930 – 3 June 2009) was a British computer scientist. He was one of the first to realise that the lambda calculus could be used to model a programming language, an insight that is essential to the development of bo ...

, and John McCarthy, to create an

operational semantics Operational semantics is a category of formal programming language semantics in which certain desired properties of a program, such as correctness, safety or security, are verified by constructing proofs from logical statements about its execut ...

that could define the whole of IBM's

PL/I PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. I ...

programming language. The

meta-language In logic and linguistics, a metalanguage is a language used to describe another language, often called the ''object language''. Expressions in a metalanguage are often distinguished from those in the object language by the use of italics, quot ...

used for this was dubbed by people outside the laboratory as the

Vienna Definition Language The Vienna Development Method (VDM) is one of the longest-established formal methods for the development of computer-based systems. Originating in work done at the IBM Laboratory Vienna in the 1970s, it has grown to include a group of techniques a ...

(VDL). These descriptions were used for

compiler design In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

research into compiler design during 1968–70. The

formal method In computer science, formal methods are mathematically rigorous techniques for the specification, development, and verification of software and hardware systems. The use of formal methods for software and hardware design is motivated by the exp ...

VDM (

Vienna Development Method The Vienna Development Method (VDM) is one of the longest-established formal methods for the development of computer-based systems. Originating in work done at the IBM Laboratory Vienna in the 1970s, it has grown to include a group of techniques ...

) was a result of research at the laboratory by

Dines Bjørner __NOTOC__ Professor Dines Bjørner (born 4 October 1937, in Odense) is a Danish computer scientist. He specializes in research into domain engineering, requirements engineering and formal methods. He worked with Cliff Jones and others on the V ...

, Cliff Jones, Peter Lucas, and others.

References

Organizations with year of establishment missing Organizations with year of disestablishment missing Laboratory Vienna Computer science research organizations Computer science institutes Organisations based in Vienna Research institutes in Austria {{comp-sci-stub

See also

References