Abstract :
The phrase “algorithmic language” is conspicuously associated with Algol, the acronym first used to name the programming language Algol 60, which originated through a cooperation between the ACM and Association for Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (GaMM) groups of programming specialists. One crucial meeting was the first joint meeting of the two groups, held in Zurich, 27 May to 2 June 1958. The report from this meeting, known as the Zurich Report, was made available to a wide audience through the Communications of the ACM in December 1958 as the “Preliminary Report- International Algebraic Language”1 and through the new German-based journal Numerische Mathematik as the “Report on the Algorithmic Language Algol by the ACM Committee on Programming Languages and the GaMM Committee on Programming”2 in December 1959, a year later. The two articles are basically identical, but their titles are not. Why the shift from “algebraic” (IAL) to “algorithmic” (Algol) in 1958 or 1959? Clearly, the community was searching for a word. Just like “procedure,” “information,” “code,” or “program,” the notion of an “algorithm” was one of the qualifications of choice to characterize the quintessence of computer science, at the time when Hartree´s notion of “numerical analysis” no longer served the purpose.
