From 1970 until 1973, while working for a company named KGMISZSZI in Budapest, I was programming in FORTRAN II on a CII French computer. This FORTRAN version supported only one-dimensional arrays.

Between September 1973 and September 1974 at the University of Rangoon I used FORTRAN IV on an ICL 1900 computer.

From January 1975 until December 1976 I was programming in FORTRAN IV on a CDC 6600 computer, while working for SIA Ltd in London. CDC 6600 FORTRAN supported Assembler code embedded in and interspersed with FORTRAN code.

From December 1976 until January 1978 I converted the statistical package BMD from IBM-FORTRAN IV into UNIVAC-FORTRAN IV.

At the beginning of 1978 I sent about 8 suggestions, one of them was the need for string-handling facilities, to a FORTRAN Standard Committee in Edinburgh. I think it concerned FORTRAN 77. I am sure that the Committee were all aware of all that I had suggested, but they thanked me all the same.

From December 1978 until April 1979 I was speeding up a weather forecasting program in FORTRAN on a CYBER-203 supercomputer. Control data had their own FORTRAN dialect, vector and matrix operations were supported. The Met Office bought the Cyber 203 supercomputer.

From June 1985 until April 1986 I was maintaining programs written in FORTRAN 77 on a HARRIS computer at Coventry Polytechnic.

From May 1989 until September 1991 I maintained programs written in FORTRAN 77 on a PDP 11 at A.C. Nielsen Co. Ltd.

During my part-time research at Aston University from 1986 until 1994, I developed a FORTRAN 77 program on a VAX. The string-handling facility of FORTRAN 77 is widely used in my program. It was possible to run batch jobs at Aston University. The VAX computers were replaced by SUN computers. I had to convert my program from VAX FORTRAN into SUN FORTRAN.

Thanks to my contacts with the Fortran SG, in 2005 I was able to use the GNU Compiler Collection FORTRAN 77 compiler plus the MinGW libraries and the PFE editor to convert my Aston program from SUN FORTRAN 77 to run on a FUJITSU-SIEMENS PC under MS Windows, for which I shall always be grateful.

Josef Illes
February 2007

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Last modified: Sun 9 Dec 2012 15:00:41