The A-0 system (Arithmetic Language version 0), written by Grace Hopper in 1951 and 1952 for the UNIVAC I, was the first compiler ever developed for an electronic computer. The A-0 functioned more as a loader or linker than the modern notion of a compiler. A program was specified as a sequence of subroutines and arguments. The subroutines were identified by a numeric code and the arguments to the subroutines were written directly after each subroutine code. The A-0 system converted the specification into machine code that could be fed into the computer a second time to execute the program.
The A-0 system was followed by the A-1, A-2, A-3 (released as ARITH-MATIC), AT-3 (released as MATH-MATIC) and B-0 (released as FLOW-MATIC).
The A-2 system was developed at the UNIVAC division of Remington Rand in 1953 and released to customers by the end of that year. Customers were provided the source code for A-2 and invited to send their improvements back to UNIVAC. Thus A-2 was an early, and perhaps the first, example of free and open-source software.
Famous quotes containing the word system:
“The golden mean in ethics, as in physics, is the centre of the system and that about which all revolve, and though to a distant and plodding planet it be an uttermost extreme, yet one day, when that planet’s year is completed, it will be found to be central.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)