Fortran : 1st program 1954, Sept 20
-
Very geeky Foxtrot comic for Fortran celebration! https://i.stack.imgur.com/TKkXL.jpg[^] Sept 20, 1954 the first Fortran program was run. On this day 09/20 – Manning[^]
The first FORTRAN IV program I wrote was around 1971 using punch cards and it was run on a CDC Star computer if I remember correctly. My last was a couple of years ago rewriting an old FORTRAN 77 program to run on a PC using INTEL FORTRAN. It was quite amazing that the numeric results during testing were identical out the 7 or 8 decimal places.
-
Fortran is the only programming language I was formally taught. I learned it at school. We had to write our program on coding sheets. They were delivered to the Midland Bank in the town and run on their mainframe. We got the results a week later. Today's code/compile/debug cycle is a bit quicker. I blame my being overweight on that improvement. I used to have an exercise bike in my office and would work on it while my code was being compiled (typically 15-20 minutes). Now, even my biggest solution (67 projects) takes only a couple of minutes to build.
Phil
The opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of the author, especially if you find them impolite, inaccurate or inflammatory.
My first programs were done that way. It was 1968. The lessons used a text book plus one listened to lectures on the radio. One wrote the programs on coding sheets which one posted in. They were keypunched and run and the printout and the cards were mailed back. You tried really hard not to make coding errors with the one week turnaround. When I got to uni the following year I was amazed to find that I could punch my own cards and submit the deck and get an overnight turnaround. Later, by staying back at night, I could get the operators to run my deck while I waited and the turnaround came down to one hour. At the uni the system was an IBM 7040 and the Fortran compiler was the WATFOR compiler. There were no: screens, disk drives or networks. Only punchcards, printouts and magnetic tapes. The system, with its IBM 1401 satellite system for handling the card and paper peripherals, had 32K 36-bit words of main memory and its mass storage consisted of 6 magnetic tape drives. As I recall the tapes they used stored around 20MB.
-
Fortran IV IBM 360 Watfor compiler - February 1971 University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg as a student. First paid program on same computer as a research assistant December 1971. 50 years ago.
I was using WATFOR on an IBM 7040 as an undergraduate. I got paid a few dollars an hour to write programs for the Dept of Computer Science's administrative unit, for tabulating marks or something like that. That might have been in 1970. In 1971 I was in 3rd year Computer Science and during the vacations I was employed by Computer Sciences of Australia where one of my duties involved writing programs in various languages, including Fortran, that could be used as acceptance tests after upgrades to the system software on the Univac 1108. After completing my degree in 1972 I joined Control Data Australia where again Fortran was the main languages used by our clients on the CDC 6600. Throughout all of these jobs, however, I probably wrote more code in the assembly languages of the respective computers - plus others such as the English Electric KDF9, Control Data 1700, Digital Equipment PDP-8. Fortran lives on - but none of those companies are still around.
-
I was using WATFOR on an IBM 7040 as an undergraduate. I got paid a few dollars an hour to write programs for the Dept of Computer Science's administrative unit, for tabulating marks or something like that. That might have been in 1970. In 1971 I was in 3rd year Computer Science and during the vacations I was employed by Computer Sciences of Australia where one of my duties involved writing programs in various languages, including Fortran, that could be used as acceptance tests after upgrades to the system software on the Univac 1108. After completing my degree in 1972 I joined Control Data Australia where again Fortran was the main languages used by our clients on the CDC 6600. Throughout all of these jobs, however, I probably wrote more code in the assembly languages of the respective computers - plus others such as the English Electric KDF9, Control Data 1700, Digital Equipment PDP-8. Fortran lives on - but none of those companies are still around.
After university, I worked in a mining company which had a CDC 7000. I remember that it had a file system called LISA (Linked Access Sequential Access I think it meant). When they upgraded to a CDC Cyber something it was fantastic. We used to compile the program and then do the fine tuning in the assembly output to get speed. That was the time when we used manual stop watches to measure the speed of a program when we tried to get the best time possible, a couple of seconds more or less didn't make a difference.
-
After university, I worked in a mining company which had a CDC 7000. I remember that it had a file system called LISA (Linked Access Sequential Access I think it meant). When they upgraded to a CDC Cyber something it was fantastic. We used to compile the program and then do the fine tuning in the assembly output to get speed. That was the time when we used manual stop watches to measure the speed of a program when we tried to get the best time possible, a couple of seconds more or less didn't make a difference.
In programming the CDC 6600 I also used to recode the innermost stuff in assembly language for speed. Time on our system was charged by the second. High priority jobs were scheduled immediately but cost 50c per second. That was in 1973 when my entry-level job paid $6000 per year, so it is more like $5 per second today. The compilers were not as good as optimizing as today's compilers so a good recode in assembly language could result in a 10x speedup, i.e. a 10x reduction in cost. In addition there was a charge for the number of I/O operations but there was also a multiplier for the field-length (the amount of main memory you were using at the time of the I/O) since the job tied up main memory due to the I/O buffers needing to be fixed during the transfer. This meant it was also very beneficial to structure a job to reduce its memory utilization to the absolute minimum during an I/O phase and expand it to the maximum during a CPU-bound phase. Again there was the possibility for 10-fold reductions in cost.
-
Very geeky Foxtrot comic for Fortran celebration! https://i.stack.imgur.com/TKkXL.jpg[^] Sept 20, 1954 the first Fortran program was run. On this day 09/20 – Manning[^]
-
[^]
>64 If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
-
Very geeky Foxtrot comic for Fortran celebration! https://i.stack.imgur.com/TKkXL.jpg[^] Sept 20, 1954 the first Fortran program was run. On this day 09/20 – Manning[^]
-
Very geeky Foxtrot comic for Fortran celebration! https://i.stack.imgur.com/TKkXL.jpg[^] Sept 20, 1954 the first Fortran program was run. On this day 09/20 – Manning[^]
At the risk of playing can you top this, IMB 1130, 1965, 8K memory. OOPS: IBM
>64 If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
-
Very geeky Foxtrot comic for Fortran celebration! https://i.stack.imgur.com/TKkXL.jpg[^] Sept 20, 1954 the first Fortran program was run. On this day 09/20 – Manning[^]
-
At the risk of playing can you top this, IMB 1130, 1965, 8K memory. OOPS: IBM
>64 If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
Coded in FORTRAN (before numbered versions) in 1962, IBM 7090. Fortunately graduated to assembler for CDC 3600 by 1964 (for a COBOL compiler)
Joan F Silverston jsilverston@cox.net nhswinc.com
-
Fortran IV IBM 360 Watfor compiler - February 1971 University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg as a student. First paid program on same computer as a research assistant December 1971. 50 years ago.
My first programming class in college (fall of 1979) used WATFIV on an IBM 370.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
My first program was in Fortran IV and was for an IBM 360 in 1968. Last time I used Fortran was in 1988 on a MicroVax.
-
Fortran IV IBM 360 Watfor compiler - February 1971 University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg as a student. First paid program on same computer as a research assistant December 1971. 50 years ago.
FORTRAN IV on WATFOR was my first high level language (if you exclude Honeywell Time Sharing Basic). I was still at school in 1974 and borrowed a textbook overnight and read it cover-to-cover. Then upset the teacher it belonged to by writing more complex programs than she could. (Coding sheets sent to the local county council for mispunching onto 80-char punch cards - turn-round time: 2 weeks)
-
FORTRAN IV on WATFOR was my first high level language (if you exclude Honeywell Time Sharing Basic). I was still at school in 1974 and borrowed a textbook overnight and read it cover-to-cover. Then upset the teacher it belonged to by writing more complex programs than she could. (Coding sheets sent to the local county council for mispunching onto 80-char punch cards - turn-round time: 2 weeks)
