V – COBOL Session

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the origins and creation of the COBOL Committee, short-range committee activities, Relationship of FACT to COBOL, producing the December 1959 version of COBOL, COBOL in 1960, the first COBOL compilers, rationale for content of language, language definition and implications for current and future languages. One of the interesting events of 1960 in regard to COBOL was the action and the reaction of several of the manufacturers. RCA and Remington-Rand Univac were involved in a race to produce the first COBOL compiler. IBM was having internal qualms about what to do about COBOL. Perhaps the most significant event took place on December 6, 1960, and December 7, 1960. Essentially, the same COBOL program was run on both the RCA and Remington-Rand Univac computers with changes only the Environment Division and perhaps one or two trivial changes elsewhere.