In the early days of electronic computers, memory was not as efficient or inexpensive as it is to
COBOL
Grade Range: 5-12
Resource Type(s): Reference Materials
Date Posted:
5/25/2012
This online exhibition tells of the development of COBOL, a computer programming lanugage, and how it changed the commercial, banking, and defense industries. Fifty years ago, each computer maker used its own programming languages to tell a computer what to do. In 1959, a group of programmers devised COBOL, a COmmon, Business-Oriented Language. Programs written in COBOL could run on more than one manufacturer’s computer. In a 1960 test, the same COBOL programs ran successfully on two computers built by different manufacturers.