The function was to develop a language that was comprehensive, simple to use, extendible, and would substitute Cobol and Fortran. The result was a large and complex language that took a long time to compile. In the textile industry, yarn was brought from the shop to be milled. The gadget had a “store” which consisted of memory to carry 1,000 numbers of 50 decimal digits each. Numbers from the “store” were transferred to the “mill” for processing. One set directed the operation and the other set inputted the variables.
