Computing · 1959

COBOL

A language for business, written almost like English.

A committee building on Grace Hopper's FLOW-MATIC defined COBOL for records and payrolls. Hundreds of billions of lines were written, and it still processes a large share of banking transactions.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

A-0 compiler 1952

What it led to 1

IBM System/360 1964

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Computation per constant dollar, 1850-2006 Latest: 7.3B million units of computer power per 2006 $ (2003) Source: Nordhaus 2007, Two Centuries of Productivity Growth in Computing, J. Econ. Hist. 67(1), Table 6