Klerer-May System

The Klerer-May System is a programming language developed in the mid-1960s, oriented to numerical scientific programming, whose most notable feature is its two-dimensional syntax based on traditional mathematical notation.

Example of a statement in the Klerer-May programming language

For input and output, the Klerer-May system used a Friden Flexowriter modified to allow half-line motions for subscripts and superscripts.[1] The character set included digits, upper-case letters, subsets of 14 lower-case Latin letters and 18 Greek letters, arithmetic operators (+ − × / |) and punctuation (. , ( )), and eight special line-drawing characters (resembling ╲ ╱ ⎜ _ ⎨ ⎬ ˘ ⁔) used to construct multi-line brackets and symbols for summation, products, roots, and for multi-line division or fractions.[2] The system was intended to be forgiving of input mistakes, and easy to learn; its reference manual was only two pages.[3]

The system was developed by Melvin Klerer and Jack May at Columbia University's Hudson Laboratories in Dobbs Ferry, New York, for the Office of Naval Research, and ran on GE-200 series computers.[2]

References

  1. ↑ Klerer, Melvin; May, Jack (1965). "A user oriented programming language". The Computer Journal. 8 (2): 103–109. doi:10.1093/comjnl/8.2.103.
  2. 1 2 Sammett, Jean (1969). Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals. Prentice-Hall. pp. 284–294. ISBN 0-13-729988-5.
  3. ↑ Klerer, Melvin; May, Jack (1965). Reference Manual. Hudson Labs, Dobbs Ferry, NY: Columbia University.

Further reading


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