1.
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
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The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was a U. S. federal agency founded on March 3,1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1,1958, the agency was dissolved, and its assets and personnel transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics, NACA was pronounced as discrete letters, rather than as a whole word. NACA was also key in developing the area rule that is used on all modern supersonic aircraft and it was modeled on similar national agencies found in Europe. The most influential agency upon which the NACA was based was the British Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, in December 1912, President William Howard Taft had appointed a National Aerodynamical Laboratory Commission chaired by Robert S. Woodward, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Legislation was introduced in both houses of Congress early in January 1913 to approve the commission, but when it came to a vote, assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote that he heartily the principle on which the legislation was based. Walcott suggested the tactic of adding the resolution to the Naval Appropriations Bill, according to one source, The enabling legislation for the NACA slipped through almost unnoticed as a rider attached to the Naval Appropriation Bill, on 3 March 1915. The committee of 12 people, all unpaid, were allocated a budget of $5,000 per year. President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law the day, thus formally creating the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. On January 29,1920, President Wilson appointed pioneering flier, by the early 1920s, it had adopted a new and more ambitious mission, to promote military and civilian aviation through applied research that looked beyond current needs. NACA researchers pursued this mission through the impressive collection of in-house wind tunnels, engine test stands. Commercial and military clients were also permitted to use NACA facilities on a contract basis, facilities Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory Ames Aeronautical Laboratory Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory Muroc Flight Test Unit In 1922, NACA had 100 employees. In addition to assignments, staff were encouraged to pursue unauthorized bootleg research. The result was a string of fundamental breakthroughs, including thin airfoil theory, NACA engine cowl, the NACA airfoil series. The full-size 30-by-60-foot Langley wind tunnel operated at no more than 100 miles per hour and these were speeds Lockheed engineers considered useless for their purposes. Arnold took up the matter and overruled NACA objections to higher air speeds, NACA built a handful of new high-speed wind tunnels, and Mach 0.75 (570 mph was reached at Moffetts 16-foot wind tunnel late in 1942. In the years immediately preceding World War II, NACA was involved in the development of designs that served key roles in the war effort. This enabled the B-17 to be used as a key aircraft in the war effort, the designs and information gained from NACA research on the B-17 were used in nearly every major U. S. military powerplant of the Second World War. Nearly every aircraft used some form of forced induction that relied on information developed by NACA, because of this, U. S. -produced aircraft had a significant power advantage above 15,000 feet, which was never fully countered by Axis forces
2.
IBM
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International Business Machines Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and was renamed International Business Machines in 1924, IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware, middleware and software, and offers hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM is also a research organization, holding the record for most patents generated by a business for 24 consecutive years. IBM has continually shifted its business mix by exiting commoditizing markets and focusing on higher-value, also in 2014, IBM announced that it would go fabless, continuing to design semiconductors, but offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries. Nicknamed Big Blue, IBM is one of 30 companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the worlds largest employers, with nearly 380,000 employees. Known as IBMers, IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, in the 1880s, technologies emerged that would ultimately form the core of what would become International Business Machines. On June 16,1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company based in Endicott, New York. The five companies had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, New York, Dayton, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Washington, D. C. and Toronto. They manufactured machinery for sale and lease, ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders, meat and cheese slicers, to tabulators and punched cards. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. fired from the National Cash Register Company by John Henry Patterson, called on Flint and, Watson joined CTR as General Manager then,11 months later, was made President when court cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Having learned Pattersons pioneering business practices, Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTRs companies and his favorite slogan, THINK, became a mantra for each companys employees. During Watsons first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million, Watson had never liked the clumsy hyphenated title of the CTR and in 1924 chose to replace it with the more expansive title International Business Machines. By 1933 most of the subsidiaries had been merged into one company, in 1937, IBMs tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data, its clients including the U. S. During the Second World War the company produced small arms for the American war effort, in 1949, Thomas Watson, Sr. created IBM World Trade Corporation, a subsidiary of IBM focused on foreign operations. In 1952, he stepped down after almost 40 years at the company helm, in 1957, the FORTRAN scientific programming language was developed. In 1961, IBM developed the SABRE reservation system for American Airlines, in 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts. A year later it moved its headquarters from New York City to Armonk. The latter half of the 1960s saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, on April 7,1964, IBM announced the first computer system family, the IBM System/360
3.
Computer
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A computer is a device that can be instructed to carry out an arbitrary set of arithmetic or logical operations automatically. The ability of computers to follow a sequence of operations, called a program, such computers are used as control systems for a very wide variety of industrial and consumer devices. The Internet is run on computers and it millions of other computers. Since ancient times, simple manual devices like the abacus aided people in doing calculations, early in the Industrial Revolution, some mechanical devices were built to automate long tedious tasks, such as guiding patterns for looms. More sophisticated electrical machines did specialized analog calculations in the early 20th century, the first digital electronic calculating machines were developed during World War II. The speed, power, and versatility of computers has increased continuously and dramatically since then, conventionally, a modern computer consists of at least one processing element, typically a central processing unit, and some form of memory. The processing element carries out arithmetic and logical operations, and a sequencing, peripheral devices include input devices, output devices, and input/output devices that perform both functions. Peripheral devices allow information to be retrieved from an external source and this usage of the term referred to a person who carried out calculations or computations. The word continued with the same meaning until the middle of the 20th century, from the end of the 19th century the word began to take on its more familiar meaning, a machine that carries out computations. The Online Etymology Dictionary gives the first attested use of computer in the 1640s, one who calculates, the Online Etymology Dictionary states that the use of the term to mean calculating machine is from 1897. The Online Etymology Dictionary indicates that the use of the term. 1945 under this name, theoretical from 1937, as Turing machine, devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, mostly using one-to-one correspondence with fingers. The earliest counting device was probably a form of tally stick, later record keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi which represented counts of items, probably livestock or grains, sealed in hollow unbaked clay containers. The use of counting rods is one example, the abacus was initially used for arithmetic tasks. The Roman abacus was developed from used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BC. Since then, many forms of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In a medieval European counting house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, the Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest mechanical analog computer, according to Derek J. de Solla Price. It was designed to calculate astronomical positions and it was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to circa 100 BC
4.
IBM 701
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The IBM701, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was announced to the public on April 29,1952, and was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer. Its business computer siblings were the IBM702 and IBM650 and it was based on the IAS machine. The system used vacuum tube logic circuitry and electrostatic storage, consisting of 72 Williams tubes with a capacity of 1024 bits each, each of the 72 Williams tubes was 3 inches in diameter. Memory could be expanded to a maximum of 4096 words of 36 bits by the addition of a set of 72 Williams tubes or by replacing the entire memory with magnetic core memory. The Williams tube memory and later core memory each had a cycle time of 12 microseconds. The Williams tube memory required periodic refreshing, mandating the insertion of refresh cycles into the 701s timing, an addition operation required five 12-microsecond cycles, two of which were refresh cycles, while a multiplication or division operation required 38 cycles. Instructions were 18 bits long, single address, sign - Whole word or Half word operand address Opcode -32 instructions Address -4096 Half word addresses Numbers were either 36 bits or 18 bits long, signed magnitude, fixed point. The IBM701 had only two programmer accessible registers, The accumulator was 38 bits long, the multiplier/quotient was 36 bits long. Nineteen IBM701 systems were installed, the University of California Radiation Laboratory at Livermore developed a language compilation and runtime system called the KOMPILER for their 701. A Fortran compiler was not released by IBM until the IBM704, the 701 can claim to be the first computer displaying the potential of artificial intelligence in Arthur Samuels Checkers-playing Program. IBM701 competed with Remington Rands ERA1103 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. The successor of the 701 was the index register-equipped IBM704, the 704 was not compatible with the 701, however, as the 704 increased the size of instructions from 18 bits to 36 bits to support the extra features. The 704 also marked the transition to magnetic core memory, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers is often attributed to Thomas Watson, Senior in 1943 and Junior at several dates in the 1950s. This misquote is from the 1953 IBM annual stockholders meeting, Thomas Watson, Jr. was describing the market acceptance of the IBM701 computer. Before production began, Watson visited with 20 companies that were potential customers. This is what he said at the meeting, as a result of our trip, on which we expected to get orders for five machines, we came home with orders for 18. ”Aviation Week for 11 May 1953 says the 701 rental charge was about $12,000 a month. A second 40-hour shift ups the rental to $20,000 a month, amdahl discusses his role in the design of several computers for IBM including the IBM701, the IBM704 and the STRETCH. He discusses his work with Nathaniel Rochester and IBMs management of the process for computers
5.
Vacuum tube
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In electronics, a vacuum tube, an electron tube, or just a tube, or valve, is a device that controls electric current between electrodes in an evacuated container. Vacuum tubes mostly rely on thermionic emission of electrons from a hot filament or a cathode heated by the filament and this type is called a thermionic tube or thermionic valve. A phototube, however, achieves electron emission through the photoelectric effect, the simplest vacuum tube, the diode, contains only a heater, a heated electron-emitting cathode, and a plate. Current can only flow in one direction through the device between the two electrodes, as electrons emitted by the travel through the tube and are collected by the anode. Adding one or more control grids within the tube allows the current between the cathode and anode to be controlled by the voltage on the grid or grids, Tubes with grids can be used for many purposes, including amplification, rectification, switching, oscillation, and display. In the 1940s the invention of devices made it possible to produce solid-state devices, which are smaller, more efficient, more reliable, more durable. Hence, from the mid-1950s solid-state devices such as transistors gradually replaced tubes, the cathode-ray tube remained the basis for televisions and video monitors until superseded in the 21st century. However, there are still a few applications for which tubes are preferred to semiconductors, for example, the used in microwave ovens. One classification of vacuum tubes is by the number of active electrodes, a device with two active elements is a diode, usually used for rectification. Devices with three elements are used for amplification and switching. Additional electrodes create tetrodes, pentodes, and so forth, which have additional functions made possible by the additional controllable electrodes. X-ray tubes are vacuum tubes. Phototubes and photomultipliers rely on electron flow through a vacuum, though in those cases electron emission from the cathode depends on energy from photons rather than thermionic emission, since these sorts of vacuum tubes have functions other than electronic amplification and rectification they are described in their own articles. A vacuum tube consists of two or more electrodes in a vacuum inside an airtight enclosure, most tubes have glass envelopes, though ceramic and metal envelopes have been used. The electrodes are attached to leads which pass through the envelope via an airtight seal, Tubes were a frequent cause of failure in electronic equipment, and consumers were expected to be able to replace tubes themselves. In addition to the terminals, some tubes had an electrode terminating at a top cap. The principal reason for doing this was to avoid leakage resistance through the tube base, the bases were commonly made with phenolic insulation which performs poorly as an insulator in humid conditions. There was even a design that had two top cap connections
6.
Magnetic-core memory
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Magnetic-core memory was the predominant form of random-access computer memory for 20 years between about 1955 and 1975. Such memory is often just called core memory, or, informally, Core uses tiny magnetic toroids, the cores, through which wires are threaded to write and read information. Each core represents one bit of information, the cores can be magnetized in two different ways and the bit stored in a core is zero or one depending on that cores magnetization direction. The process of reading the core causes the core to be reset to a zero, when not being read or written, the cores maintain the last value they had, even when power is turned off. Using smaller cores and wires, the density of core slowly increased. However, reaching this density required extremely careful manufacture, almost always carried out by hand in spite of repeated efforts to automate the process. The cost declined over this period from about $1 per bit to about 1 cent per bit, the introduction of the first semiconductor memory SRAM chips in the late 1960s began to erode the core market. The first successful DRAM, the Intel 1103 which arrived in quantity in 1972 at 1 cent per bit, improvements in semiconductor manufacturing led to rapid increases in storage and decreases in price that drove core from the market by around 1974. Although core memory is obsolete, any computer memory is still occasionally called core, in particular, the basic concept of using the square hysteresis loop of certain magnetic materials as a storage or switching device was known from the earliest days of computer development. Much of this knowledge had developed due to an understanding of transformers, the stable switching behavior was well known in the electrical engineering field, and its application in computer systems was immediate. For example, J. Presper Eckert and Jeffrey Chuan Chu had done some development work on the concept in 1945 at the Moore School during the ENIAC efforts. Frederick Viehe applied for patents on the use of transformers for building digital logic circuits in place of relay logic beginning in 1947. A patent on a fully developed core system was granted in 1947 and this development was little-known, however, and the mainstream development of core is normally associated with three independent teams. Substantial work in the field was carried out by the Shanghai-born American physicists An Wang and Way-Dong Woo, the name referred to the way that the magnetic field of the cores could be used to control the switching of current in electromechanical systems. Wang and Woo were working at Harvard Universitys Computation Laboratory at the time, Wang was able to patent the system on his own. The MIT Whirlwind computer required a fast memory system for real-time aircraft tracking use, at first, Williams tubes—a storage system based on cathode ray tubes—were used, but these devices were always temperamental and unreliable. William Papian of Project Whirlwind cited one of these efforts, Harvards Static Magnetic Delay Line, the first core memory of 32 x 32 x 16 bits was installed on Whirlwind in the summer of 1953. In April 2011, Forrester recalled, the Wang use of cores did not have any influence on my development of random-access memory, the Wang memory was expensive and complicated
7.
Vocoder
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A vocoder is a category of voice codec that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption, voice transformation, etc. The decoder applies these control signals to corresponding filters for re-synthesis, since these control signals change only slowly compared to the original speech waveform, the bandwidth required to transmit speech can be reduced. This allows more speech channels to share a single communication channel, by encrypting the control signals, voice transmission can be secured against interception. Its primary use in fashion is for secure radio communication. The advantage of this method of encryption is that none of the signal is sent. The receiving unit needs to be set up in the same filter configuration to re-synthesize a version of the signal spectrum. The vocoder has also used extensively as an electronic musical instrument. The decoder portion of the vocoder, called a voder, can be used independently for speech synthesis, the human voice consists of sounds generated by the opening and closing of the glottis by the vocal cords, which produces a periodic waveform with many harmonics. This basic sound is filtered by the nose and throat to produce differences in harmonic content in a controlled way. There is another set of sounds, known as the unvoiced and plosive sounds, the vocoder examines speech by measuring how its spectral characteristics change over time. This results in a series of signals representing these modified frequencies at any time as the user speaks. In simple terms, the signal is split into a number of frequency bands, thus, the vocoder dramatically reduces the amount of information needed to store speech, from a complete recording to a series of numbers. Information about the frequency of the original voice signal is discarded. It is this aspect of the vocoding process that has made it useful in creating special voice effects in popular music. Analog vocoders typically analyze an incoming signal by splitting the signal into a number of tuned frequency bands or ranges, a modulator and carrier signal are sent through a series of these tuned bandpass filters. In the example of a robot voice, the modulator is a microphone. There are usually between eight and 20 bands, the amplitude of the modulator for each of the individual analysis bands generates a voltage that is used to control amplifiers for each of the corresponding carrier bands. The result is that components of the modulating signal are mapped onto the carrier signal as discrete amplitude changes in each of the frequency bands
8.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He is perhaps most famous for being co-writer of the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001, A Space Odyssey, Clarke was a science writer, who was both an avid populariser of space travel and a futurist of uncanny ability. On these subjects he wrote over a dozen books and many essays, in 1961 he was awarded the Kalinga Prize, an award which is given by UNESCO for popularizing science. These along with his fiction writings eventually earned him the moniker Prophet of the Space Age. His other science fiction writings earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, for many years Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov were known as the Big Three of science fiction. Clarke was a proponent of space travel. In 1934, while still a teenager, he joined the British Interplanetary Society, in 1945, he proposed a satellite communication system, an idea which won him the Franklin Institutes Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1963, and other honours. Later he was the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from 1946–47, Clarke emigrated from England to Sri Lanka in 1956, largely to pursue his interest in scuba diving. That year he discovered the ruins of the ancient Koneswaram temple in Trincomalee. Clarke augmented his fame later on in the 1980s, from being the host of television shows such as Arthur C. He lived in Sri Lanka until his death and he was knighted in 1998 and was awarded Sri Lankas highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya, in 2005. Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England, and grew up in nearby Bishops Lydeard, as a boy, he grew up on a farm enjoying stargazing, fossil collecting, and reading American science fiction pulp magazines. He received his education at Huish Grammar school in Taunton. Early influences included dinosaur cigarette cards, which led to an enthusiasm for fossils starting about 1925, in his teens, he joined the Junior Astronomical Association and contributed to Urania, the societys journal, which was edited in Glasgow by Marion Eadie. At Clarkes request, she added an Astronautics Section, which featured a series of articles by him on spacecraft and he moved to London in 1936 and joined the Board of Education as a pensions auditor. Clarke spent most of his wartime service working on ground-controlled approach radar, as documented in the semi-autobiographical Glide Path, although GCA did not see much practical use during the war, it proved vital to the Berlin Airlift of 1948–1949 after several years of development. Clarke initially served in the ranks, and was an instructor on radar at No.2 Radio School. He was commissioned as an officer on 27 May 1943
9.
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
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2001, A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science-fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay was written by Kubrick and Arthur C, Clarke, partially inspired by Clarkes short story The Sentinel. Clarke concurrently wrote the novel 2001, A Space Odyssey, published soon after the film was released, the film follows a voyage to Jupiter with the sentient computer Hal after the discovery of a mysterious black monolith affecting human evolution. It deals with the themes of existentialism, human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence and it is noted for its scientifically accurate depiction of space flight, pioneering special effects, and ambiguous imagery. It uses sound and minimal dialogue in place of narrative techniques, the soundtrack consists of classical music such as Gayane Ballet Suite, The Blue Danube. Production was subcontracted to Kubricks production company, and care was taken that the film would be sufficiently British to qualify for subsidy from the Eady Levy, Kubrick had shot his previous two films in England and decided to settle there permanently during filming. 2001, A Space Odyssey initially received mixed reactions from critics and audiences and it was nominated for four Academy Awards and received one for its visual effects. The sequel 2010 was released in 1984, directed by Peter Hyams, Today,2001, A Space Odyssey is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made. In 1991, it was deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant by the United States Library of Congress, in 2010, it was named the greatest film of all time by The Moving Arts Film Journal. In an African desert millions of years ago, a tribe of ape-men is driven away from their water hole by a rival tribe and they awaken to find a featureless black monolith has appeared before them. Guided in some fashion by the monolith, they learn how to use a bone as a weapon and drive their rivals away from the water hole. Millions of years later, a Pan Am space plane carries Dr. Heywood Floyd to a station orbiting Earth for a layover on his trip to Clavius Base. After Floyd has a call with his daughter, his Soviet scientist friend. At Clavius, Floyd heads a meeting of base personnel, apologizing for the cover story. His mission is to investigate a recently found artifact buried four years ago. Floyd and others ride in a Moonbus to the artifact, an identical to the one encountered by the ape-men. Sunlight strikes the monolith and a loud high-pitched radio signal is heard, eighteen months later, the United States spacecraft Discovery One is bound for Jupiter. On board are mission pilots and scientists Dr. David Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole, most of Discoverys operations are controlled by the ships computer, HAL9000, referred to by the crew as Hal
10.
Blackjack
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Blackjack, also known as twenty-one, is the most widely played casino banking game in the world. Blackjack is a card game between a player and dealer, meaning players compete against the dealer but not against other players. It is played one or more decks of 52 cards. The player or players are dealt a hand and add together the value of their cards. Face cards are counted as ten points, a player and the dealer can count an ace as 1 point or 11 points. All other cards are counted as the value shown on the card. After receiving their first two cards, players have the option of getting a hit, or taking an additional card, in a given round, the player or the dealer wins by having a score of 21 or by having the higher score that is less than 21. Scoring higher than 21 results in a loss, a player may win by having any final score equal to or less than 21 if the dealer busts. The dealer must hit until the cards total 17 or more points, Players win by not busting and having a total higher than the dealers. The dealer loses by busting or having a lesser hand than the player who has not busted, If the player and dealer have the same total, this is called a push, and the player typically does not win or lose money on that hand. If all available players bust, the hand ends automatically without the dealer having to play his or her hand, Blackjack has inspired other casino games, including Spanish 21 and pontoon. Blackjacks precursor was twenty-one, a game of unknown origin, the first written reference is found in a book by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, most famous for writing Don Quixote. Cervantes was a gambler, and the characters of his tale Rinconete y Cortadillo. They are proficient at cheating at ventiuna, and state that the object of the game is to reach 21 points without going over, the game is played with the Spanish baraja deck, which lacks eights and nines. This short story was written between 1601 and 1602, implying that ventiuna was played in Castilla since the beginning of the 17th century or earlier, later references to this game are found in France and Spain. When twenty-one was introduced in the United States, gambling houses offered bonus payouts to stimulate players interest, One such bonus was a ten-to-one payout if the players hand consisted of the ace of spades and a black jack. This hand was called a blackjack, and the name stuck to the even though the ten-to-one bonus was soon withdrawn. In the modern game, a blackjack refers to any hand of an ace plus a ten or face card regardless of suits or colours, at a casino blackjack table, the dealer faces five to seven playing positions from behind a semicircular table
11.
Fortran
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Fortran is a general-purpose, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing. It is a language for high-performance computing and is used for programs that benchmark. Fortran encompasses a lineage of versions, each of which evolved to add extensions to the language while usually retaining compatibility with prior versions, the names of earlier versions of the language through FORTRAN77 were conventionally spelled in all-capitals. The capitalization has been dropped in referring to newer versions beginning with Fortran 90, the official language standards now refer to the language as Fortran rather than all-caps FORTRAN. In late 1953, John W. Backus submitted a proposal to his superiors at IBM to develop a practical alternative to assembly language for programming their IBM704 mainframe computer. Backus historic FORTRAN team consisted of programmers Richard Goldberg, Sheldon F. Best, Harlan Herrick, Peter Sheridan, Roy Nutt, Robert Nelson, Irving Ziller, Lois Haibt, and David Sayre. Its concepts included easier entry of equations into a computer, a developed by J. Halcombe Laning and demonstrated in the Laning. A draft specification for The IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System was completed by mid-1954, the first manual for FORTRAN appeared in October 1956, with the first FORTRAN compiler delivered in April 1957. John Backus said during a 1979 interview with Think, the IBM employee magazine, the language was widely adopted by scientists for writing numerically intensive programs, which encouraged compiler writers to produce compilers that could generate faster and more efficient code. The inclusion of a complex data type in the language made Fortran especially suited to technical applications such as electrical engineering. By 1960, versions of FORTRAN were available for the IBM709,650,1620, significantly, the increasing popularity of FORTRAN spurred competing computer manufacturers to provide FORTRAN compilers for their machines, so that by 1963 over 40 FORTRAN compilers existed. For these reasons, FORTRAN is considered to be the first widely used programming language supported across a variety of computer architectures, the arithmetic IF statement was similar to a three-way branch instruction on the IBM704. However, the 704 branch instructions all contained only one destination address, an optimizing compiler like FORTRAN would most likely select the more compact and usually faster Transfers instead of the Compare. Also the Compare considered −0 and +0 to be different values while the Transfer Zero, the FREQUENCY statement in FORTRAN was used originally to give branch probabilities for the three branch cases of the arithmetic IF statement. The Monte Carlo technique is documented in Backus et al, many years later, the FREQUENCY statement had no effect on the code, and was treated as a comment statement, since the compilers no longer did this kind of compile-time simulation. A similar fate has befallen compiler hints in other programming languages. The first FORTRAN compiler reported diagnostic information by halting the program when an error was found and that code could be looked up by the programmer in a error messages table in the operators manual, providing them with a brief description of the problem. Before the development of disk files, text editors and terminals, programs were most often entered on a keyboard onto 80-column punched cards
