JTC1/SC22/WG6 (no longer active) - Algol
last revised 6 April 1996
ISO/IEC
JTC1/SC22/WG6
Algol was established in the 1970s by SC22's predecessor committee,
ISO TC97/SC5, and was inherited by the new SC22 when it
started work in 1985. Algol 60, along with Cobol, was one of the first
programming languages for which a standardization project was undertaken by
SC5 when it was founded in the early 1960s, and indeed had already been
discussed by TC97 with IFIP, the International Federation for Information
Processing, whose WG2.1 was responsible for the language.
An ISO Draft Recommendation (using the terminology of the time)
was produced in 1967, but for a variety of technical and non-technical
reasons Algol 60 did not achieve full status as an International
Standard until 1984. (A Japanese national standard had been
published in 1972, and a German national standard in 1972.)
Agreement was reached somewhat earlier, however, on an ISO Technical
Report on the hardware representation of Algol 60 basic symbols.
WG6 was also concerned with attempts to establish international
standardization projects for the related languages Algol 68 and Simula 67.
However, neither proposal achieved sufficient international support.
(Simula became a Swedish national standard in 1987.) In consequence,
WG6 was disbanded in 1987, following an SC22 letter ballot. Its final
report appears in SC22 document N395.
At the five-year ISO review in 1989 SC22 resolved that the Algol 60
standard should be withdrawn, and the Technical Report on hardware
representation, not included in that review, was withdrawn in 1991.
A history of the Algol 60 standardization project, including the attempts
to establish projects for Algol 68 and Simula 67, can be found in:
- I.D. Hill, Chapter 4: Algol 60; pp 47-55 of
I.D. Hill and B.L. Meek,
Programming language standardisation, Ellis Horwood 1980
- I.D. Hill, Paper IV: The Algol languages, pp 85-87 of
The current programming language standards scene,
Computers and Standards Vol 2 Nos 2/3, 1983
- J.W. van Wingen, Paper 6: The Algol languages, pp of
The programming language standards scene, ten years on,
Computer Standards and Interfaces, Vol 16 Nos 5/6, 1994
Approved international specifications produced:
- ISO 1538:1984, Programming language Algol 60 (now withdrawn)
- ISO TR 1672:1977, Algol 60 Hardware Representation (now withdrawn)
This page prepared by Brian Meek;
last revised 6 April 1996