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In computing, the KOMPILER was one of the first language compilation and runtime systems for International Business Machines' IBM 701, the fastest commercial U.S. computer available in 1955.
Information on KOMPILER is listed on page 16 of Volume 2, Number 5 (May 1959) of the Communications of the ACM . Known versions are KOMPILER 2 for IBM 701 and KOMPILER 3 for the IBM 704. KOMPILER was eventually replaced by a Fortran compiler on the IBM 704.
Fortran is a third generation, compiled, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing.
John Warner Backus was an American computer scientist. He led the team that invented and implemented FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level programming language, and was the inventor of the Backus–Naur form (BNF), a widely used notation to define syntaxes of formal languages. He later did research into the function-level programming paradigm, presenting his findings in his influential 1977 Turing Award lecture "Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?"
The IBM 704 is a large digital mainframe computer introduced by IBM in 1954. It was the first mass-produced computer with hardware for floating-point arithmetic. The IBM 704 Manual of operation states:
The type 704 Electronic Data-Processing Machine is a large-scale, high-speed electronic calculator controlled by an internally stored program of the single address type.
The IBM 7090 is a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computer that was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 is the fourth member of the IBM 700/7000 series scientific computers. The first 7090 installation was in December 1959. In 1960, a typical system sold for $2.9 million or could be rented for $63,500 a month.
The IBM 7030, also known as Stretch, was IBM's first transistorized supercomputer. It was the fastest computer in the world from 1961 until the first CDC 6600 became operational in 1964.
The IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer and its first series production mainframe computer, which was announced to the public on May 21, 1952. It was designed and developed by Jerrier Haddad and Nathaniel Rochester and was based on the IAS machine at Princeton.
In computer programming, CAR (car) and CDR (cdr) are primitive operations on cons cells introduced in the Lisp programming language. A cons cell is composed of two pointers; the car operation extracts the first pointer, and the cdr operation extracts the second.
The IBM 700/7000 series is a series of large-scale (mainframe) computer systems that were made by IBM through the 1950s and early 1960s. The series includes several different, incompatible processor architectures. The 700s use vacuum-tube logic and were made obsolete by the introduction of the transistorized 7000s. The 7000s, in turn, were eventually replaced with System/360, which was announced in 1964. However the 360/65, the first 360 powerful enough to replace 7000s, did not become available until November 1965. Early problems with OS/360 and the high cost of converting software kept many 7000s in service for years afterward.
The University of Michigan Executive System, or UMES, a batch operating system developed at the University of Michigan in 1958, was widely used at many universities. Based on the General Motors Executive System for the IBM 701, UMES was revised to work on the mainframe computers in use at the University of Michigan during this time and to work better for the small student jobs that were expected to be the primary work load at the university.
A pact is a formal agreement.
The IBM 740 CRT Recorder was announced in 1954 and used with the IBM 701, IBM 704, and IBM 709 computers to draw vector graphics images, point by point, on 35 mm photographic film. The 740 film recorder contained digital-to-analog converters and a 7-inch, high precision, electrostatic CRT. The raster size was 1,024 by 1,024, but only 256 resolved spots could be displayed on a vertical or horizontal line. Points could be displayed in one of two intensities, and a line could be drawn from a point, vertically or horizontally, to the edge of the display to form an axis.
SHARE Inc. is a volunteer-run user group for IBM mainframe computers that was founded in 1955 by Los Angeles-area users of the IBM 704 computer system. It evolved into a forum for exchanging technical information about programming languages, operating systems, database systems, and user experiences for enterprise users of small, medium, and large-scale IBM computers such as IBM S/360, IBM S/370, zSeries, pSeries, and xSeries. Despite the capitalization of all letters in the name, the official website says "SHARE is not an acronym; it's what we do."
The GM-NAA I/O input/output system of General Motors and North American Aviation was the first operating system for the IBM 704 computer.
PACT was a series of compilers for the IBM 701 and IBM 704 scientific computers. Their development was conducted jointly by IBM and a committee of customers starting in 1954. PACT I was developed for the 701, and PACT IA for the 704. The emphasis in that early generation of compilers was minimization of the memory footprint, because memory was a very expensive resource at the time. The word "compiler" was not in widespread use at the time, so most of the 1956 papers described it as an "(automatic) coding system", although the word compiler was also used in some papers.
Nathaniel Rochester was the chief architect of the IBM 701, the first mass produced scientific computer, and of the prototype of its first commercial version, the IBM 702. He wrote the first assembler and participated in the founding of the field of artificial intelligence.
A sense switch, or program switch, is a switch on the front panel of a computer whose state can be tested by conditional branch instructions in software. Most early computers had several sense switches. They were typically used by the operator to set program options.
Owen R. Mock was a computer software designer and programmer who pioneered computer operating systems in the 1950s. In 1954 Mock was part of a group of programmers at the Los Angeles division of North American Aviation (NAA) who developed the PACT series of compilers for the IBM 701 computer. In December 1955, Mock's group installed in the IBM 701 the "North American 701 Monitor" which was the first operating system to be in operation.
David Sayre was an American scientist, credited with the early development of direct methods for protein crystallography and of diffraction microscopy. While working at IBM he was part of the initial team of ten programmers who created FORTRAN, and later suggested the use of electron beam lithography for the fabrication of X-ray Fresnel zone plates.
In addition to the drums used as main memory by IBM, e.g., IBM 305, IBM 650, IBM offered drum devices as secondary storage for the 700/7000 series and System/360 series of computers.
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