The very first guide to FORTRAN

Have you ever written code in Fortran? Even if the answer is no, you will probably use systems that have been developed or run on it. This is the first high-level programming language using abstractions. We can say that it was from Fortran that modern programming originated.

This year, the very first user manual for Fortran, which was published on October 15, 1956, turned 56 years old. Download it here .


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The language Fortran was developed by IBM in the 1950s. Despite the fact that Fortran is not as popular as it once was, it ranks 26th in the TIOBE Programming Index.

Also relatively recently, Fortran has been called “the ideal programming language for HPC” (high performance computing). Although this should not be very surprising, since the software standard used in the world supercomputers from the Top 500 list is written in Fortran.

Originally, Fortran was developed as an alternative to the IBM 704 computer assembler (shown in the picture below). A draft description of the FORTRAN language called “PRELIMINARY REPORT. Specifications for the IBM Mathemaical FORmula TRANslation System, FORTRAN ”was completed in 1954. But despite this, the first manual was published a few years later in 1956, and the first compiler became available in 1957.



The Fortran Guide, dated October 15, 1956, was written by the IBM Programming Research Group and the Applied Science Division. The introduction of this document states: "The translation system for mathematical formulas, or FORTRAN for short, will contain a large number of programs that will allow the IBM 704 computer to perceive the task description in terms of mathematical notation and automatically create a highly efficient program to solve it."

According to John Backus, the head of the development team, most of the work was aimed at “being lazy,” because he terribly did not like to write programs for the IBM 701 in assembler.

You can try Fortran today, there are many different options, including GNU Fortran .