phipps@fortune.UUCP (Clay Phipps) (04/17/84)
Ah, how history repeats itself ...
A language design effort was begun in October 1963 by the newly-formed
"Advanced Language Development Committee" of the SHARE *FORTRAN* Project.
(SHARE was/is the user group for engineering and scientific users
of IBM mainframes).
The language design criteria were:
1. Anything goes: if a particular combination of symbols
has a reasonably sensible meaning, that meaning will be made official.
...
2. Full access to machine and operating system facilities.
...
This language was originally referred to as "FORTRAN VI" ["VI" = Roman 6].
Once the decision was made to be incompatible with FORTRAN,
the name "NPL" ["New Programming Language"] was chosen,
but later discarded (at the request of England's NPL =
National Physical Laboratory) in favor of its current egocentric name:
"PL/I" ["I" = Roman 1].
See George Radin: "The Early History and Characteristics of PL/I",
*Proc. of the ACM SIGPLan History of Programming Languages Conference*,
*SIGPLan Notices*, vol. 13, num. 8, August 1978, p. 227 .. 241.
This proceedings is also available, edited, in book form.
-- Clay Phipps
--
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