I have this memory, but I cannot verify it.

When I first joined the ACM, I got to select what SIGs I wanted to (sub?)join. SIGPLAN seemed interesting because, hey, programming languages are kind of cool, so I joined it. At the time, they distributed a newsletter called, I think, the "Fortran Forum"; perhaps that was even a subgroup inside of SIGPLAN.

I only remember getting one or two issues of the newsletter. But I believe one of them had an article about Voyager and the use of Fortran. The article stuck out to me because it mentioned that they thought the mission would only has for (however long), but of course it's been going on much longer than originally anticipated. However, I can find no reference to that now, and perhaps the article I'm recalling wasn't talking about either Fortran (forth as an alternative?) or a mission other than Voyager.

Regardless, one DOES wonder in what capacity FORTRAN was used in the mission. Was it used on the onboard computers, or was it used on the downlink stations for e.g. data analysis?

        - Dan C.