Oral History of John Backus

John Backus discusses the creation of FORTRAN, the first successful high-level programming language, and the design of its compiler in an interview with Grady Booch.

Interviewed by Grady Booch on September 5, 2006, in Ashland, Oregon, X3715.2007 © Computer History Museum John Backus led a team at IBM in 1957 that created the first successful high-level programming language, FORTRAN. It was designed to solve problems in science and engineering, and many dialects of the language are still in use throughout the world. Describing the development of FORTRAN, Backus said, "We simply made up the language as we went along. We did not regard language design as a difficult problem, merely a simple prelude to the real problem: designing a compiler which could produce efficient programs . . . We also wanted to eliminate a lot of the bookkeeping and detailed, repetitive planning which hand coding involved." The name FORTRAN comes from FORmula TRANslation. The language was designed for solving engineering and scientific problems. FORTRAN IV was first introduced by IBM in the early 1960s and still exists in a number of similar dialects on machines from various manufacturers. * Note: Transcripts represent what was said in the interview. However, to enhance meaning or add clarification, interviewees have the opportunity to modify this text afterward. This may result in discrepancies between the transcript and the video. Please refer to the transcript for further information - computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102657970. Visit computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/ for more information about the Computer History Museum's Oral History Collection.