Dramatis Personae in order of appearance

John Backus
Cuthbert Hurd
Irving Ziller
Harlan Herrick
Robert Nelson
Sheldon Best
Roy Nutt
Peter Sheridan
David Sayre
Lois Haibt
Richard Goldberg

Source:
D.N. Leeson, IBM FORTRAN Exhibit and Film, Annals of the History of Computing, Volume 6 Number 1, pages 41-48, January 1984.
This paper contains a full transcript of the film as well as describing its origins and production.
IEEE Digital Library

A copy of the IBM film in Windows Media Video format at 320 x 240 pixels resolution with a file size of 12.8 MB can be downloaded from the Computer History Museum website.

Their roles in the development of FORTRAN I

John Backus - Project Manager
Sheldon Best - Section 5, FORTRAN I; UNIVAC 1100 FORTRAN
Richard Goldberg - Section 3, Section 5 debugging FORTRAN I
Grace (Libby) Mitchell - Primer, FORTRAN I and FORTRAN II
Lois Haibt - Section 4, FORTRAN I
Harlan Herrick - Section 1, FORTRAN I
Cuthbert Hurd - Level 2 manager FORTRAN I
Robert Nelson - Optimization, Section 2, FORTRAN I
Roy Nutt - I/O and format, FORTRAN I
David Sayre - Editor, reference manual; assistant project manager
Peter Sheridan - Arithmetic, FORTRAN I; functions, FORTRAN II
Irving Ziller - Section 2, FORTRAN I; FORTRAN II

Source:
J.A.N. Lee, Pioneer Day, 1982, Annals of the History of Computing, Volume 6 Number 1, pages 7-14, January 1984.
IEEE Digital Library

More information on the structure and operation of the FORTRAN I compiler for the IBM 704 is given in J.W. Backus, R.J. Beeber, S. Best, R. Goldberg, L.M. Haibt, H.L. Herrick, R.A. Nelson, D. Sayre, P.B. Sheridan, H.J. Stern, I. Ziller, R.A. Hughes, R. Nutt, The FORTRAN automatic coding system, Proceedings Western Joint Computer Conference, Los Angeles, California, pages 188-198, February 1957.

More information on the background and development of the FORTRAN I, II and III compilers can be found on the FORTRAN pages of the Computer History Museum website, maintained by Paul McJones.

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Last modified: Sun 9 Dec 2012 15:00:34