[comp.lang.fortran] FORTRAN-II historical note

mckie@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (William McKie) (08/20/90)

Random ramblings on FORTRAN-II:

I believe it was FORTRAN-II on an IBM-1130 that I used in 1972 (at a
lab in the eastern Washington desert).  It supported nifty features
like direct access record i/o, and a run-time trace facility which
could track the changing values of variables & the flow of control
through the program, generating large stacks of printer paper.  There
was a nice calcomp plotter attached.  It was a hands-on machine (not
kept inside a glass cage) and one could interact with one's FORTRAN-II
program from the system console typewriter.  I remember that FORTRAN-II
source code tended to have lots of statement labels in the left part of
source code listings, as there was no logical IF statement, and the
3-way arithmetic if was used instead.  I don't remember there being a
PROGRAM statement in FORTRAN-II.

Bill McKie
NASA Ames
mckie@sky.arc.nasa.gov