14 Aug
2017
14 Aug
'17
6:02 a.m.
On Sun, 13 Aug 2017, Dave Horsfall wrote:
On Sat, 12 Aug 2017, Steve Johnson wrote:
It turns out the original FORTRAN (manual published in October 1956; code first shipped
around April 1957) included the arithmetic IF as well as the assigned and computed GOTO
statements — see chapter 4 of this manual:
J.W. Backus, R.J. Beeber, S. Best, R. Goldberg, H.L. Herrick, R.A. Hughes, L.B. Mitchell,
R.A. Nelson, R. Nutt, D. Sayre, P.B. Sheridan, H. Stern, I. Ziller. The FORTRAN Automatic
Coding System for the IBM 704 EDPM : Programmer's Reference Manual. Applied Science
Division and Programming Research Department, International Business Machines Corporation,
October 15, 1956, 51 pages.
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/704/704_FortranProgRefMan_Oct56.pdf
(For more on the original FORTRAN compiler, see
http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/FORTRAN/.)
A little Googling shows that the IF I mentioned
was called the
"arithmetic IF".
Ah yes. It was in FORTRAN II, as I recall.