The Smithsonian redux

Every so often I try again to communicate with the Smithsonian. Eventually, I was able to make contact with Alicia Cutler, a Specialist in the Collection of Computers & Mathematics. She ran a search for me in their internal catalog, which produced a 12-page listing of documents related to Fortran. Three of them jumped out at me:

page 7, FORTRAN VOL I, 1959, “This is a FORTRAN program listing for the 704. Well documented.”

page 5, FORTRAN VOL II, “This is a FORTRAN program for the IBM 704, the title of which states “FORTRAN Editor Information”. Well documented”

page 5, FORTRAN VOL. III, 1959, “This is a FORTRAN program listing for the IBM 704. Well documented.”

I asked Alicia for more information on these three, and she replied, “I’ve looked over the documentation and have discovered that these three volumes relate to FORTRAN II, not FORTRAN. There is a letter from A.L. Harmon in May of 1959 stating that these are the SAP listings for the final FORTRAN II. It was split into three volumes but all together it is 1321 pages.”

Eureka!

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