ALCOR (ALGOL Converter, acronym) is an early computer language definition created by the ALCOR Group, a consortium of universities, research institutions and manufacturers in Europe and the United States which was founded in 1959 and which had 60 members in 1966. The group had the aim of a common

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...

specification for a subset of

ALGOL 60 ALGOL 60 (short for ''Algorithmic Language 1960'') is a member of the ALGOL family of computer programming languages. It followed on from ALGOL 58 which had introduced code blocks and the begin and end pairs for delimiting them, representing a ...

after the ALGOL meeting in Copenhagen in 1958. In addition to its programming application, as the name Algol is also an astronomical reference, to the star

Algol ALGOL (; short for "Algorithmic Language") is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in 1958. ALGOL heavily influenced many other languages and was the standard method for algorithm description used by the ...

, so too, Alcor is a reference to the star Alcor. This star is the fainter companion of the 2nd

magnitude Magnitude may refer to: Mathematics *Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction *Magnitude (mathematics), the relative size of an object *Norm (mathematics), a term for the size or length of a vector *Order of ...

star

Zeta Ursae Majoris Mizar is a second-apparent magnitude, magnitude star in the handle of the Big Dipper Asterism (astronomy), asterism in the constellation of Ursa Major. It has the Bayer designation ζ Ursae Majoris (Latinisation of names, Latin ...

. This was sometimes ironized as being a bad

omen An omen (also called ''portent'') is a phenomenon that is believed to foretell the future, often signifying the advent of change. It was commonly believed in ancient history, and still believed by some today, that omens bring divine messages ...

for the future of the language. In Europe, a high level machine architecture for

was devised which was emulated on various real computers, among them the Siemens 2002 and the

IBM 7090 The IBM 7090 is a second-generation Transistor computer, transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computer that was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 is the fourth member o ...

. An ALGOL manual was published which provided a detailed introduction of all features of the language with many program snippets, and four appendixes: # Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 60 # Report on Subset ALGOL 60 (IFIP) # Report on Input-Output Procedures for ALGOL 60 # An early "standard" character set for representing ALGOL 60 code on paper and paper tape. This character set introduced the characters "×", ";", " , ", and "⏨" into the

CCITT-2 The Baudot code () is an early character encoding for telegraphy invented by Émile Baudot in the 1870s. It was the predecessor to the International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2), the most common teleprinter code in use before ASCII. Each char ...

code, the first two replacing "?" and the BEL control character, the others taking unused code points.

References

* Baumann, R. (1961) Baumann, R. "ALGOL Manual of the ALCOR Group, Pts. 1, 2 & 3" Elektronische Rechenanlagen No. 5 (Oct. 1961), 206–212; No. 6 (Dec. 1961), 259–265; No. 2 (Apr. 1962); (in German)
Papertape, punched card, magnetic tape coding schemes
Computer Museum, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

External links

ALCOR in The Encyclopedia of Computer Languages

The ALCOR Project

Klaus Samelson Klaus Samelson (21 December 1918 – 25 May 1980) was a German mathematician, physicist, and computer pioneer in the area of programming language translation and push-pop stack algorithms for sequential formula translation on computers. Early ...

Friedrich L. Bauer Friedrich Ludwig "Fritz" Bauer (10 June 1924 – 26 March 2015) was a German pioneer of computer science and professor at the Technical University of Munich. Life Bauer earned his Abitur in 1942 and served in the Wehrmacht during World War ...

, 1962. Algol programming language family Systems programming languages Procedural programming languages Character encoding Character sets Programming languages created in the 1960s {{Prog-lang-stub