236 ◾ Computing
most of the new languages were geared toward a single architecture.
Itquickly became obvious that machine-dependent languages were not
the way to foster widespread collaboration, portability, and standardiza-
tion. Inresponse to this growing problem, several large computer user
groups in the United States banded together to submit a petition to the
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1957 to form a com-
mittee to spearhead the creation of a machine-independent scientic
programming language [1]. While capable, Fortran was not a practical
candidate for this universal programming language since it was owned
exclusively by IBM at the time.
A few years before this, another group in Germany called the Society
for Applied ...