[Relayed from Burt Grad] As a practitioner, not a historian, I can't debate the details of the creation of COBOL. But I joined Bob Bemer's group in IBM's Data Processing Division in February, 1960 (Roy Goldfinger was part of that group). IBM had designed COMTRAN as the counterpart of FORTRAN and planned to make the language available for use by any manufacturer or user company just as it had with FORTRAN. The IBM people felt that COMTRAN was a consistent language and was superior to COBOL and continued to plan to implement COMTRAN compilers in 1960. But, as I recall, the pressure from DoD particularly was too strong and therefore IBM made a marketing decision to drop COMTRAN and only support COBOL, in spite of what IBM perceived as its deficiencies. I was not privy to the debates within the CODASYL committee, only to what I heard from Bob Bemer and Roy Goldfinger (and other members of Bemer's team), about how the final decisions were made,,,but I had a strong impression that the other manufacturers (Univac, RCA, Honeywell and others) were not willing to have IBM be the "owner" of the commercial language as it was of the scientific language. There is no doubt in my mind that Grace Hopper believed that COBOL was principally based on her work at Univac (she is quoted in many interviews to that effect including at least one on the Computer History Museum website) and, barring any forensic analysis that provesd otherwise, I expect that is as close to the truth as we will get now that so many of the CODASYL participants have died and probably have not left detailed records of the committee deliberations. Burt Grad --part1_bb374.55830386.41641bf2_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META content=3D"text/html; charset=3DUS-ASCII" http-equiv=3DContent-Type> <META name=3DGENERATOR content=3D"MSHTML 11.00.9600.17280"></HEAD> <BODY id=3Drole_body style=3D"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; COLOR:= #000000"=20 bottomMargin=3D7 leftMargin=3D7 rightMargin=3D7 topMargin=3D7><FONT id=3Dr= ole_document=20 color=3D#000000 size=3D2 face=3DArial> <DIV>As a practitioner, not a historian, I can't debate the details= of the=20 creation of COBOL. But I joined Bob Bemer's group in IBM's Data Processing= =20 Division in February, 1960 (Roy Goldfinger was part of that group). IBM ha= d=20 designed COMTRAN as the counterpart of FORTRAN and planned to make the lan= guage=20 available for use by any manufacturer or user company just as it had with= =20 FORTRAN. The IBM people felt that COMTRAN was a consistent language and wa= s=20 superior to COBOL and continued to plan to implement COMTRAN com= pilers=20 in 1960. But, as I recall, the pressure from DoD particularly was too stro= ng and=20 therefore IBM made a marketing decision to drop COMTRAN and only support= COBOL,=20 in spite of what IBM perceived as its deficiencies.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I was not privy to the debates within the CODASYL committee, only to= what I=20 heard from Bob Bemer and Roy Goldfinger (and other members of Bemer's team= ),=20 about how the final decisions were made,,,but I had a strong impression th= at the=20 other manufacturers (Univac, RCA, Honeywell and others) were not will= ing to=20 have IBM be the "owner" of the commercial language as it was of the scient= ific=20 language.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>There is no doubt in my mind that Grace Hopper believed that COBOL=20 was principally based on her work at Univac (she is quoted in ma= ny=20 interviews to that effect including at least one on the Computer=20 History Museum website) and, barring any forensic analysis that= =20 provesd otherwise, I expect that is as close to the truth as we will get= now=20 that so many of the CODASYL participants have died and probably have not= left=20 detailed records of the committee deliberations. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Burt Grad </DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML> --part1_bb374.55830386.41641bf2_boundary-- --===============3271587676444744596== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members --===============3271587676444744596==--