Oral history interview with Harry N. Cantrell, 1982 Feb. 23 | WorldCat.org (original) (raw)

Summary:Cantrell discusses his career as a mechanical engineer at GE during its initial implementation of computers, and the influence of the FORTRAN programming language. He describes his first experiences at GE using an IBM 604 computer and a Card Programmed Calculator (CPC), and his later experiences in GE's Fluid Mechanics Research Group operating a CPC, an IBM 701 and an IBM 704 computer, on which they first ran FORTRAN in 1957. He recounts the various problems with the language, e.g., the lack of subroutines, and the attempts of his group to remedy the deficiencies. He explains how they finally wrote TASMIN, for financial data processing, to avoid FORTRAN's limitations