Today in History

First Program in FORTRAN Runs (1954)

Fortran is a computer language whose name is a blend of the words "formula" and "translation." Developed in the 1950s by John Backus, its many versions are still in use today as the primary language for some of the most intensive supercomputing tasks, such as weather/climate modeling, computational chemistry, quantum chromodynamics, and simulation of automobile crash dynamics. Why is Fortran primarily used for scientific and numerical tasks? More...